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VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY
TRANSCRIPTION COVER SHEET
Interviewee:
Joe LaBonte
Interviewer:
William W. Cobb Jr.
Date of Interview:
27 October 2010
Place of Interview:
George Sutherland Archives Orem, Utah
Recordist:
Brent Seavers
Recording Equipment:
Zoom Recorder H4n
Panasonic HD Video Camera AG-HM C709
Transcribed by:
Raili Bjarnson
Audio Transcript Edit:
Kimberly Williamson
Cover Summary:
Kimberly Williamson
Transcript proofed by:
Kimberly Williamson
Completed and Posted:
Reference:
WC=William W. Cobb Jr.(Interviewer)
JL=Joe LaBonte (Interviewee)
Brief Description of Contents:
Joseph LaBonte enlisted in the US Navy before he got drafted in 1968. He talks about his active duty from April 1969 until January 1972 on board an aircraft carrier working in operational electronics where he oversaw the communication between the ship and aircrafts. He explains his anger after the war and his personal journey in dealing with this resentment. Currently, Joseph LaBonte resides in Springville, Utah
NOTE: Interjections during pauses or transitions in dialogue such as "uh" and false starts and stops in conversations are not included in transcription. Changes by interviewee are incorporated in text. All additions to transcript are noted with brackets. Clarifications and additional information are endnoted.1 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
Audio Transcription
[24:26]
Beginning of interview
WC: Today is October 27, 2010. And I’m William Cobb a Professor of History at Utah Valley University. And we are interviewing today as part of the Vietnam Era Oral History project, Joe LaBonte. Joe, I would like to welcome you to the university campus. And I would like to start with just some general biographical questions and then get into some information pertaining to your life before you went into the military. So let me start with, please give me your full name and address.
JL: It’s Joseph K. LaBonte. 593 East 100 South Springville, Utah, 84663.
WC: Date of birth.
JL: 12-2-48
WC: And place of birth.
JL: Campton , New Hampshire. I grew up in Loudon, New Hampshire.
WC: This is a redundant question. Were you raised anywhere other than your place of birth?
JL: No. I was raised there until Vietnam, I was raised there.
WC: Married, children?
JL: No. Nope. There were a few times where it got close but never happened.
WC: Alright. Now to the before section of the interview. When you were in high school and or college, what were your feelings about the war in Vietnam?
JL: Well, the one that really comes to mind is a teacher. We called him, I don’t remember what his first name was, Moon Mullens. It was a geography class. And he spent a lot of time berating us and commiserating over the loss of his brother during Korea. And so the overall sense that I got was, Communism that’s bad, and we got to go after it. And I didn’t understand what that was about. It was just this guy getting angry about stuff and he had a problem with what happened to his brother. And I wanted to just get my class done in geography so I could move on. We actually got into a conflict at one point where I just walked out of his class.
WC: So move on in the sense of joining the military and fight Communism yourself.
JL: No, I mean I had John Wayne. I had all that stuff. My dad was in the Navy during World War II. Just at the very tail end of it. And up in the attic there were little things that I looked at that he had from the Seabees, and other emblems. So there was a sense of the 2 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
Navy and all of that, and getting connected to it. But I don’t ever remember really feeling any passion about Vietnam. It was a very distant thing, I didn’t understand it. I did understand that I was going to have to make a decision to either get drafted or join. So I selected, joining. And I joined the Navy so I wouldn’t get shot at. But other than any patriotism or sense of duty, no, I didn’t have that. My sense of most of the guys I met was they didn’t have it either. We were pretty much drafted in one way or another at that time. And you were stuck with it.
WC: What year did you graduate high school?
JL: I graduated in ’68.
WC: How much did you know about the war? It’s a pretty intense period in 1968. How much did you know?
JL: I didn’t follow it. I was busy, my passion was farming. I grew up 4-H, Boy Scouts. My mom kept us pretty busy. And I really love farming. I like being among the men. I think it’s a natural thing for young men to want to be around the men. And that’s where the men were. At a very young age I was constantly under foot. Finally a farmer put me to work. And I felt like I found a place of belonging. So my life was five in the morning until eight or nine o’clock at night farming. I wasn’t watching TV. I wasn’t paying attention to what was going on in the world around me. And when it came up to I had to join the selective service it’s at that point that I started paying some attention to it. Other than we did have one or two people that came back that were killed. So there was some attention to that. I don’t have memories of being engaged in what was going on there.
WC: To the extent that you had any knowledge or information about the war, can you remember where that primarily came from? Was it conversations with your parents around the dinner table? Or was it through Walter Cronkite, picking up a newspaper, or from some other source?
JL: Like I said, I really don’t have a memory of getting engaged in it that much. I remember conversations about McCarthy, and McCarthyism, and Communism, and some degree of understanding of what he had done to other people’s lives. But we weren’t really a political family. We really didn’t get into the discussions about any of this. I was in the country. I was living out in a little farming community.
[30:00]
All of that seems so distant to us, I think. It did to me. It wasn’t until after I actually joined that it became a reality. I’m not really sure what that reality meant to me until after I got into it about a year.
WC: So would it be fair to say, to the extent that you had conversations with your buddies in high school, it was more about being concerned about whether you were going to be drafted or whether you should enlist whether than the geo-political situation. 3 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
JL: Pretty much. We were too busy with the farming, and of course I was interested in girls. That’s going to the dances in Campton, New Hampshire. It’s all of the sudden I’m going from a little town, Loudon my first eight years of schooling. And then high school I had to go to Concord, which seemed like a big deal, and just trying to find a way to fit into the whole thing. And getting an interest in women, and how do you connect.
WC: Do you know what the feelings of friends and parents were, even though you didn’t talk about it very much. Was there some underlying sense of how your parents felt about the war, whether it was right or wrong? Or you know, Joe if you get drafted you better go do your service to your country.
JL: Pretty much yeah. It was really just about going. There was no conversation about not going. I was coming up to it and I had to make a decision. I don’t remember dad and I talking about it much, or mom and I talking about it much. About the only conversations I can really link to is, I know I didn’t want to get shot, didn’t want to shoot anybody. So, that’s the extent of my trying to figure out if it’s right or wrong. It really wasn’t. I came from a background of community, you had the World War I vets coming out at Memorial Day and doing their thing. And there was always the saluting the flag and the pledge of allegiance. So there was the whole indoctrination process that kept you connected to, we’re right. We’re supposed to be there so there’s no discussion. And [I] didn’t get a sense that there was really any room for discussion with my mom or dad about it or anybody else in the community for that matter. There was nobody that I knew that was organizing, or protesting, or making noise, or saying anything against it.
WC: Any conversation about what you might see on television, which by that point would show a pretty healthy antiwar sentiment in a number of places around the country.
JL: Yeah, it’s odd because I don’t remember seeing anything at that point. I remember seeing earlier on, the water canning of African Americans, and the dogs, and that sort of thing. But I’ve squirreled my head about this. And I don’t remember really getting connected to it. I don’t know that we watched a lot of TV. Like I said farming was almost like a seven day event. I don’t remember really having any feelings about it.
WC: Do you have a religious affiliation?
JL: Not anymore.
WC: Do you know if at that time to whatever the extent you had religious affiliation at the time that you were about ready to go into the military. Did that have any effect on your sense of obligation to military service. For example, if you were a Quaker or a Mennonite you might argue for conscientious status. Was there any affect that religion had on going into the military or not.
JL: No, I grew up Catholic, my mom. My dad, he called himself a home Baptist. He’d take his dogs out hunting or something like that. If he wanted to go and have his commune 4 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
with whatever high power he thought of. Once in a while he would go down to the minister at the local Baptist church and visit with him. You know our whole setting was really very small farming community, tight knit. And connected to country right or wrong, mother drunk or sober kind of thing. There was no questioning that whole process. And Catholicism, I kind of backed away from that. I guess when I was about fourteen. It just didn’t make sense to me. I was always asking questions. And I kind of drove my parents a little nuts from time to time. But things like, If God’s all-knowing and God’s all-seeing. Why are we doing this? And so on and so forth. And eventually I just had no desire to go. Mom had us go because it was a community thing. And I have good memories of it. Coming home every Sunday and going to visit Aunt Alice and Uncle Milo. She would be bringing fresh baked bread out of the oven, and butter that had just been churned by hand from one of the farmers up the road, and Aunt Addy. So there was this sort of staying connected to family. My grandparents lived in Loudon. So everybody was like an auntie and an uncle. You couldn’t really go anywhere without mom knowing where you were. And if you didn’t show up she knew you weren’t where you’re supposed to be. And so it was really a protective kind of environment that wasn’t suppressive. It really is interesting considering all the different places I would go in the community and how much interaction I had in the community. There was absolutely no conversation about that there’s anything thing wrong with what we’re doing. And that would be the thing I think that would stick out for me.
WC: Coming at Vietnam a little bit differently, were you familiar with Southeast Asia itself. For example, with its geography or it’s philosophy, society, literature, history, traditions—
JL: Not really—
WC: you didn’t study that in your geography class?
JL: No we were too busy talking about his brother getting killed in North Korea. So we never really got into geography that I can remember. And for the most part, the classes that meant anything to me were maybe choir and biology. But my sense of education was one that, kind of pushing you towards, I think they kind of looked at you and went well, you’re college material or you’re not, at a very early age. And when they decided you weren’t they kept pushing you into your going to go into the factory [and] be a worker approach. So I don’t know if we got into any intellectual conversations. And I was going to Concord. It was like a whole new world. And it took me four years to figure it out and by the time I did it was too late. I just don’t get a sense of intellectualism back then. I do get a sense of driving my dad a little bit nuts because I would critically go at things when we talked about things, and he wasn’t interested in that. It’s what I say is what you’ll do and that sort of thing. So I think we were kind of hand strung in regards to Southeast Asia. Well, actually anywhere else, I mean Boston, Massachusetts. The auctioneer that I worked for, going down to Boston to pick up a bunch of stuff and bring it up. I probably wouldn’t have known much about New Hampshire until after joining the service. 5 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
WC: Tell me a little more about joining the military. You mentioned this a little bit before, why did you enter in the military?
JL: I had a choice. I mean I didn’t have a choice. You’re going to get drafted. So either you’re going to get drafted or you’re going to choose a path. I had pretty high battery test scores. So I went to the Navy. The guy said, “We want to get you into electronics.” They actually wanted me to sign me up for an additional two years to go into nuclear. I said, “You have four years. I’ll be glad to go but I’m not giving you two more years of my life.” That much I knew. I was pretty strong about. If I had a choice, I didn’t want to go. Burning my draft card was certainly not a choice. Anything like that you know it wasn’t going to happen.
WC: You touched on this a little bit but I would like to ask you again. At that time, before you went on to active duty, what was your sense of patriotism in service to country?
JL: I don’t think I had any. There was no sense of duty to the country. It was more like an obligation that I have to go and do this thing. I don’t know that I had a sense of country. I had a sense of (??) environment that I lived in. And I know I did kind of try to figure out how did the two come together in terms of my family. And the only way it came together was that certainly my father and I think maybe my mother maybe had been a little reluctant.
[40:00]
But at that time, women were pretty subservient to the male in most families where I grew up. And if she had any concerns, she probably didn’t voice them. But rather consigned herself to as I did, that this has to happen. I don’t ever remember having a sense of patriotism. I’d watch John Wayne. I’d watch these other movies and stuff like that. And you’d sort of get a sense of it but that was a movie. The real connectedness, I didn’t get a sense of the Constitution. I didn’t get a sense of the historical narrative. I think it was very simplistic. George Washington cut down a cherry tree. Whatever the heck that means, so on and so forth. But there was no definitive kind of cement or glue that bound that together for you.
WC: At some point your draft status made you eligible. And then you would have gotten a notice to report for a physical. And then you would have gotten a notice to report for basic training, and then to advanced training, and then to your first duty station. Was there any point along that chain of events that you ever considered not going? Like when you got your notice to report for basic training. I think you said you were base training in the Great Lakes region. Did you ever think, I really can’t do this, so close to go from the Great Lakes across the border into Canada? I don’t have a sense of patriotism. I’m just going to skip out.
JL: No, it never even occurred to me. It was more like this adventure that was outside of my knowledge sphere that I had at that point. Kind of like, my mom would white knuckle it on an airplane ride. And me, once I’m on the plane (laughs) that’s it, and I kind of 6 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
consign myself to it. And then I start talking to people or look out the window. Once the journey begins and there’s no turning back then I kind of embrace it. And so, I embrace that part of it, and going to the Great Lakes. And you know all of that was getting me out into the bigger picture. But it was not a sense of patriotism or anything like that. It was more the case—and I think that’s the case with most young people, there are some that do that perhaps do it out of a sense of dedication of patriotism or something. I think maybe it’s more of something like; I get to step outside of this world I know into a bigger world. So I kind of just embraced the whole thing all along the way. In the back of my mind is, just so long as I don’t end up going to Vietnam and end up getting shot at or shoot somebody I can work with this.
WC: When you were in basic training or advanced training, did you often talk with fellow service men or NCOsi or training instructors, or officers about Vietnam? From the perspective of informal conversation in the barracks or formal, as we used to call them, blocks of instruction where people would teach you how to use a weapon. Or they might have a block of instruction, where, here’s the history of Vietnam. So you know we are fighting this monolithic form of Communism over there. Was there any formal or informal conversation about the purpose of Vietnam, or anything like that when you were in basic [training] or AIT?ii
JL: No. I don’t remember that. I remember we were F-troop. We had this company commander that was desperately trying to get us to perform. You know they have this whole thing about you get flags each week. Everybody’s bunk was tight. And everybody‘s stuff was stuffed in a locker, right. And all of these different things that try to mold a cohesive unit and we utterly failed him. Constantly, I think we were in for eleven weeks or something like that and we just constantly failed him. To the point where the brigade commander had to come down and say, “What is the deal?” I mean, the brigade commander. This guy is coming down and asking us, “What’s it going to take? This guys the best company commander we’ve got. And you guys are failing him. And you’re failing yourselves so what are you going to do?” And this little mousey voice in the back, and this kid, we called him mouse, “We want more coke and smoke. (laughing) We want more (??). We want more talking to mom and dad on the phone.” He said, “You got it.” I mean we negotiated with the Navy. (laughs) And we done it, and we performed, and then we got some flags, and he was happy and everything. But we never talked about Vietnam. We never talked about anything. We were too busy just trying to figure out how are we going to pull this together. And he’s trying all these different methods to try to create a cohesive unit. He’s just not making it happen. So we were more focused on that, and then where were we going?
There was one kid that ended up getting real sick, I think, he had some intestinal problems or something. All of us were sick. The whole tar mat was green with people just flem, from being sick from the change in climate. January, in the Great Lakes is not the best time to (laughs) go to boot camp. It’s just like totally frigid. I don’t remember us talking about it, or the great cause, or those Communists. I didn’t get that. 7 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
WC: Now do you not know the sense of inedibility, I’m in the military so I guess I’m going to go to Vietnam. So I got to reconcile myself to, I hope I live through this. Was there any of that?
JL: There was that. I mean, being in the Navy you kind of said okay, I’m going to be on a boat. I mean that’s where your head was at. The rest of the time you’re trying to go through trying to stay on top of whatever is going on that day. We had a couple of times when they did a blanket party. You probably don’t— well a blanket party for the sake of the tape is if somebody’s messing up in the unit. And you get a little wink and a nod from the company commander that this person is messing it up for everybody. And somehow there’s this knowledge of this thing called a blanket party. Where basically there is a bunch of guys will take a blanket and just wrap it over the person so they can’t move, and then they started beating him, through the blanket. And I remember the feeling I had when I was listening to that. That I felt rather cowardly that I didn’t go to his defense. It made me feel kind of bad that— because then I thought well maybe they’ll do that to me. So that was kind of the first time I kind of had to come up to this sense of courage or lack of it. That’s the thing I felt. And I felt bad for him. You don’t get hurt very badly when that happens, I guess. But it’s scary than hell. Because within your own unit now all of the sudden you’re setting on each other. And now you’re not so sure what you can trust. But I think for my part, and whatever conversations I had with most folks. We weren’t really interested in this thing. But we were interested enough in this thing we were going through. You know it was a unique experience. And then going from boot camp to finding out my duty station was on an aircraft carrier, all right, no bullets there. I’m okay (laughs) because Vietnam doesn’t have planes that can go out and blowup air carriers and that. So I was a happy camper about that.
WC: So this carrier you’re on a training carrier in Pensacola. Tell me the dates that you were on that carrier. It must have been up to the point where you were separated from active duty when your entire tour was on that ship.
JL: Yeah. Let’s see. I went in January 23 to boot camp— eleven weeks. So it was sometime either late March, early April when I reported. I had two weeks to go home and say hi to the family. I don’t remember much about that. You know what’s to talk about? I’m going to do this thing. And then showing up at this aircraft carrier and I don’t know if any of you guys, if you’ve ever seen an aircraft carrier. And this was an old World War II vintage aircraft carrier. It was huge. I walked up to this thing and went, woo I’m going to get lost in this thing. And they know you’ll get lost so they set it up. They put you on chow duty or something like that and they keep you kind of in a central area. Then you can kind of explore out until you kind of get a sense of what you’re doing.
WC: What was your military occupational specialty on that ship?
JL: I was operational electronics. Initially, because I didn’t want to go to nuke school I was a seaman. Seaman rating is pretty much going to be something to do with the ship and that sort of thing. Then they have an air dale rating. And that means you’re going to be working with flight crews, helicopters, that sort of thing working on the flight deck 8 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
perhaps. And they changed my rating to air dale after I refused to go to boot camp, I mean nuclear school.
[50:00]
And my rating was helicopter hydraulic mechanic. And that kind of put a scare into me because that basically said I’m going to Vietnam.
WC: Helicopter.
JL: Oh, Yeah. So now I am going oh, man this is got a lot of no good. Well, I ended up on the mess decks and I make friends with the cooks. And one of them says, “Hey, wanna be a cook?” I went okay, what does that mean? “Two weeks on, two weeks off.” I’m going, really that’s cool I said. But you got to change your rating back to seaman, ah that’s too bad. (laughs) I get my rating back to seaman, which means I’m not going into any helicopters again. So while I’m on the mess decks one of my buddies, we’d all kind of moved on. I was down there as a cook, I liked cooking. I enjoyed it. It was pretty good. But he had gone to electronics on the job. And there was this Chief Mellish, he was not a very tall man, but he was the senior enlisted man on the ship. He was like a commander really. He was at all the meetings. He was on his twilight tours, last duty station. He’d been in for twenty-six years. He’s going to do two more [years] and then go state side for his last two [years] for his thirty. And he said, “Hey.” We talked. What’s it like, electronics? That sounds kind of cool. He said, “Well it’s pretty good.” I said, “Do you got anymore openings?” Yes they do. I went up talked with him. So, I ended up in electronics on the job training. I ended up with the rating of petty officer third class, which is just above seaman. I worked on radar. I was in charge of ship to air communications for the aircraft. I start seeing twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two’s. Several mechanics you know. It’s like none of this stuff we have now. It’s like really old school stuff. And so it’s great. After the second year on the ship, I knew that was it. I’m not going to Nam. And it was a great feeling, and it was also kind of a bad feeling, because I knew that there were people that did go that didn’t want to go.
WC: Were there people who rotated onto the ship who had been to Vietnam.
JL: Yeah, there were a few guys that came on.
WC: Tell me about them. You didn’t talk about it? They didn’t talk about it?
JL: No. It’s like most vets. They really don’t want to talk about it generally.
WC: How about those of you who hadn’t been? Were you pretty curious about what it was like over there?
JL: No. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to know. I knew it was there and I didn’t want any part of it. 9 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
WC: Describe a typical good day on duty. Then I’m interested in what would a bad day look like on the ship?
JL: Well a good day is clear skies and good wind, because a lot of our work was the radar systems. So everything flowing, traffics moving nice, aircrafts are going well. There’s no real problems and if there are [problems] you’re able to come up with the solutions. And being in the electronic spaces, which were air conditioned, we always found a reason to be there, because the rest of the ship was not. Where I slept, we slept right forward of the resting cable steam room. They used steam to retract the cables. And in the summer it could be 120 degrees in there. And you learned to sleep in it. The whole process of seniority was the guys that were most senior get to sleep in the electronic spaces. They’d take a mattress up there (laughs) and set up shop. And so as the rotation happened you looked for your opportunity to get into one of those spaces.
And a good day was when we were in the middle of a hurricane. We had to leave port and go out into the hurricane. And I remember my feet being propped up while we’re shifting. And an aircraft carrier isn’t going to move a lot. I mean we had fifty-foot waves. I remember being in the secondary con right in the nose of where the flight deck ends. And we’re going through preparing it in case they have to come down there, making sure the electronics is all up. We went through; somebody barfed in the chart drawers. (laughs) We had to clean that up. But it was really a magnificent moment because you’re looking out these port holes. I mean you’re right there. And these waves are just crashing up over you. So there were times like that. Those were kind of good days because they broke the monotony, they were exciting moments. You look at the expansion joints, like you’d see on a bridge. There’s two of them on an aircraft carrier’s airside. You have to have them it has to be the flex. And they’d open up like this (does hand motion) and you’re looking down into the hanger bay. And then there coming back together. So you kind of have to time you’re walking across. You get your foot in there and you done. You like to have some excitement. But I still didn’t want to go and get shot, or shoot somebody. I didn’t want that kind of excitement.
The bad days came about when Chief Mellish left. This is a man that I would have followed anywhere. Anyone of us would have, because he was that kind of man that understood how to command respect from everybody, because he respected everybody. If there was a problem he resolved it. If he had a problem, we fixed it for him. Sometimes in ways he wasn’t really happy with, but he appreciated the fact. Like, he needed a couple of mattresses for some new guys that were coming in. Well, we went down to the master at arms area and we stole a couple of mattresses from master at arms. Those guys weren’t happy about that. And they were pretty sure we took them. So Chief Mellish had to deal with them. And he came in later and he says, “You know, I love you guys. I love what you’re doing, but please don’t steal from the master at arms.” (laughs) So he was a really cool guy. But then when he left we ended up with a bunch of assholes. I mean even really the whole ship knew it. They had a bow-diddly show. Guys would go down and set up these different— and they would talk about how a first class petty officer broke his nose today because the chief warren officer made an abrupt halt. And he broke his nose on his ass. (laughter) But those guys made our lives miserable. We’re out there working, we’re 10 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
doing the work. And then we’d go to lunch and they come in and they collect all our gear. And then they’d have us chipping paint, chipping paint. We’re electronic technicians. What a total waste of time and resource. So we got into a little pissing match with them. They would take our stuff so we’d take theirs. We had this one first class petty officer, and he’d been in like his whole life, getting ready to leave, and we threw his coffee cup over the side. We threw their hats over the side. We’d throw their tools over the side. Anything they left behind, it went over the side. And one guy was even going to put some acid, because we were doing drugs back then, big time. I’m quite confident the military was making sure they were available. When I went in there was only one guy doing drugs. When I left there was probably one guy that wasn’t. And we had to hold him back and said, “No man you can’t do that.” So instead he rubbed his penis around in his cup and we watched him drinking out of this cup. (laughing) That was bad days because we shouldn’t be doing this stuff. I mean we had guys that— like one guy. He would play four of us at chess blindfolded. He won one, drew on two, and he lost one blindfolded. I mean, these were the cream of the cream, kind of. And this is the best that you, as a leader can come up with. Is to have us go down to the bowels of the ship of some obscure, like the gyroscope locker and chip paint. So that’s when things got bad. You know it got stupid.
WC: This is a period in which discipline is falling apart everywhere in Vietnam and everywhere else. How about race issues on the ship, especially after Martin Luther King was killed?
JL: Well for me, I came from an all-white community except for one Black family. And he was in Pease Air Force Base, he was in the military. And I came from a family we had a Black dentist. And I think I hope I’m right about this. I asked my brother, and he said, “Yeah, we had a Black dentist,” which is very unusual at that time. And my dad was the kind of guy, when he passed away there was probably four or five-hundred people showed up at this little church. I didn’t know who they were. He was very out there. I mean this guy had to know what was going on in everybody’s life. Not like he had to know. But if he hadn’t heard from you he went to see how you were.
[1:00:00]
He cared. He cared a lot about community. He also was a tennis player. He was a jock and I wasn’t which I think was a big disappointment for him. But I just wasn’t into that. Well he invited this doctor to come and get a membership at this little Bow Brook club, just two courts. It wasn’t like exclusive, exclusive or big shot. It was the working class Bow club kind of thing. And I think he ran into a lot of friction with people. “You can’t bring a Black guy in here.”
WC: What kind of club?
JL: A tennis club. And it seems to me that I remember dad prevailing saying, “He’s got to have one.” And he got one for him but I’m sure he never used it. So those were the kind of things that were kind of foundational for me going in on an aircraft carrier. And this is 11 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
diversity that I didn’t know existed. Which was wonderful, I was like, woe. And I was curious as hell to learn about all these different people. I didn’t come in with any stuff. And it would blow me away. We would be working with different cultures together it was all mixed up. You had African Americans. You had Hispanics. You had Native Americans. But then you’d get them apart and you’d find that there were those [individuals] that they just hated them. And I didn’t understand that. Why? What is it? Well, because he’s Black. He’s Filipino, whatever, you know. And I’d go, “I don’t get it. That’s it. There’s nothing behind it.” So for me it was great. You know it opened up a whole new world for me by being on that aircraft carrier that has been foundational to what my life has been about since. And has allowed me to really reach into other cultures and communities in a way that is kind of childlike it’s kind of like, I just want to learn.
WC: All the time that you were on the ship did conversations about the war because the war was starting to go through a period of Vietnamization and Nixon was talking about bringing more men and women home. Peace with honor is in sight. And so, as you got further into your active duty were there anymore conversations about the war, given that it’s seemed like there was some light at the end of the tunnel?
JL: My light at the end of the tunnel was this picture. There was this woman with naked breasts that I would color in each day that went by. Until I got to the last one, which meant I was out. And that was for the most part. We were occupied with these idiots that didn’t know how to lead. I mean I’d watched guys that had been in for fifteen years and they left because of these guys. I had one chief that put his hands around my neck, because I just really pissed him off. And I just went, “Go for it.” And yet he watched my back. I remember all these other things, but I don’t remember any of us really— all of us just wanted to get out. I think if there’s any sense of this conflict, I think universally we felt it was stupid. I don’t think we ever really said that, but I just feel like when I take a look at where all of us were going. You know the drugs, the alcohol. And not all, there were family guys there, which I really didn’t know that well, although I dated one of his sisters one time. But, no, we didn’t really get into it at all. I don’t remember us getting into it at all.
WC: Did the Stars and Stripes come in big stacks on board the ship everyday so people would sit around read the news or turn on the TV?
JL: Maybe, I didn’t read it. The other shining moment, which became a disastrous moment a little later on. Was, we had our executive officer was in (?). So they took one of the yawls that (??) was going to throw away. And we brought it up on deck and went through the whole thing, and we pulled all the cocking. A handful of us, it was probably about five or six of us that just tore into this thing. And we cleaned it up, and we sanded it, we painted it. And we put it in the water and it became one of the fastest yawls out there. And we had it for one month in the water and then ( ??) decided to take it back. And I remember us talking about going down there and setting it on fire. And we didn’t. But we came close because we made it that was our boat. And that was always a great time because we spent like two years working on this thing. It was so much fun. And the XOsiii down there with us and he’s one of the buds. And we just can’t wait. And we finally get it into 12 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
the water and it’s like, ah it’s beautiful. And standing out there, hanging onto a forward halyard and just standing on the bow bench and the waters splashing up over you. And it’s like, Ah, this is so good and a little squalls coming out so you get to test her out.
And then they took it away. I felt pretty bad about that. And it’s kind of representative of what’s going on today, they’re taking it away. They’re taking it away. And I want the bastards. You know it’s one thing that started getting angry for me. It’s when I started really getting pissed off about shit. And the only way I could manage my anger was doing some more drugs and alcohol. And it stayed with me probably for about five or six years after I got out, in a big way. Because, I think we also got a sense that they bullshitted us. And I felt in a sense deceived by my community at this point.
A little later on I started feeling like, wait a minute. What I had been taught by my mother. I stole a Chunkys candy bar, and I wouldn’t give any to my three year old brother. So I go to school my mom finds out, I come home. And I can feel it before I even enter the door. Before I even put my hand on the door handle, I can feel it. I walk in and my mother’s sitting at the kitchen table. The sun was setting behind her. So all I get is a sense of her kind of washed in with this [light]. And then, “Go to your room.” And it was like, uh-oh, I’m in trouble, big trouble. I mean you’re in trouble when you’re a kid, but you know you’re going to survive it. This is like; you’re wondering if you’re going to survive this. And the next morning I’m down there and I’m confessing that I stole this candy bar. And my mom’s standing there and I didn’t know, but I’m sure they organized this thing. And she’s furious. And she looks at the shop keeper and says, “What do we do?” And he says, “Well I don’t know. We have to ask the constable here.” We didn’t have police at that time we had a constable. And he said, “Well, usually we would take someone that steals and we put them in handcuffs. And we take them down to the jail and we finger print them. Put them in front of the judge and he would decide what to do with this theft.” (laughs) I’m a seven year old kid. I’m melting on the floor here. I’m in tears. So she looks at me like really angry and then looks at them and they’re going around on this thing on me. And I’m just, I don’t know, blubbering. And I remember this one guy. I can see his face, but I can’t remember his name. He steps out and he’s feeling pity for me. And I’m feeling like all is lost. I mean, mom’s abandoning me. She wants me to go to jail. This whole thing is just falling apart. And this guy steps out and he says, “Well, Dot at least he confessed.” Oh, man she turned on him and gave him the biggest eyes and said, “The little shit did not. You mind your own God damned business.” I never heard my mom swear before. So that was a big deal. And then she glared at me. And he melted back into the crowed. There was maybe ten or fifteen people. So then eventually the outcome was well Joe, are you going to steal again? The constable said, “Put it back on the shopkeeper, it’s up to them if they want to press charges.” So I got a real education in the justice system and how it works. And they said, Are you ever going to steal again Joe?” And I said, “No.” I mean adamantly and I never did.
It became apparent to me, I mean it became solid that life is about justice, and it’s about the truth. And I was abandoned by my community when I ended up going in. Instead of them doing what they should have done, which is to say, “Hell no.” We haven’t declared war. It’s unconstitutional. You have no right to do this unless you can show us clear 13 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
evidence not ideologies, but evidence that there is some cause to go into another country and slaughter all these people. And lose all of these lives of our own. So I was pretty lost about the whole thing by the time I got out of the Navy.
WC: Were these feelings that began to bubble up—
JL: Oh yeah—
WC: as you were getting separated from or discharged from.
JL: Well, I’d go home.
[1:10:00]
This is what it is for vets. This is why their homeless, generally. I’m convinced of this. We want to go home. Home is what I grew up with honesty, integrity, a sense of principals, and so forth. And these conflicts are not. And you come out the other side and you try to go back home and you can’t. You try to address that and you can’t. I can’t go home now. I tried to talk to my family and my sister and I don’t even talk anymore. Because I can’t let go of this until there is justice. I was part of a war machine that slaughtered five-million people, which seems like such a stupid thing to say. I mean, I can’t wrap my head around that. When you melt it down to a child and a mother and then they’re gone, they’re in a field and then they’re gone. And that means nothing to us? Even today that means nothing to us. You’ve got what is it, sixty-four, five-hundred people that have committed suicide? Soldiers have committed suicide, since Iraq and we wonder why. And that’s more than have been killed in the field. So, I didn’t understand. I was just angry. I didn’t have that kind of understanding. I mean I’d go home. We’d talk about, hey, we could have world peace. I mean I was on aircraft carrier where we did. Everyone didn’t get a long as family, but we could do this thing. We could really do this. And instead I got, what’s wrong with you? Your father’s got a house. He’s got a family. What’s wrong with you, you disrespect him. And I’m going I’m not disrespecting dad.
I had an uncle— I mean, everyone was kind of like an uncle and an auntie, whether the people were related or not. That’s how you looked at them. Or they were Grandma or Grandpa. That was a little island of what used to be and needs to be again. And most young people don’t have that anymore.
I was doing the drugs and the alcohol because I wasn’t getting anywhere. I don’t know if it was just that, but I wasn’t getting the relief. I was angry. I didn’t serve in combat. But I was angry, just really viscously angry about things. And I was probably suicidal for a while with the drugs and alcohol. I remember waking up one morning and going, you know if I do this again tonight, I won’t be here tomorrow. So I had to make a choice between whether or not I wanted to live or not. And I decided I wanted to [live]. And I think a part of that was because my sister got me into a youth theater program. I was into theater in a big way. Because I found that everyone else was weird. So theaters great because the weirder you are, the stranger you are the more you can grow. Because you let 14 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
go of the control part of it and you’re really letting it happen. And so I did some community theater. I found a place there. I found some great people to work with. Frank (??) was really excellent in terms of building sets and stuff. I liked the technical end of it. But my sister got me into a youth theater program up in Hanover, New Hampshire. And we did, Jesus Christ Super Star. That’s the first one they were doing. They’d been working on it for six months before I got there, which is really weird because it’s a community theater program kind of. But they had all these kids. And he was integrating babies through the hosanna scenes and it was fascinating. You had people from the college that played the instruments. And you had the congregational minister play Peter. So, it was just like this whole mix. But the kids bring such vitality. Young people would bring all this vitality. So at least it kind of helped put things on hold a little bit.
WC: You were discharged in January of ’72.
JL: ’72 yeah.
WC: These feelings began to bubble up right away—
JL: Well I had them before I got out.
WC: before you got back to New Hampshire?
JL: The last year and a half, like I said, when I first went in maybe one guy was doing drugs. By the time we left we all were except one. It was just a way of life. Drugs are about, it’s medicine. You’re just trying to maintain. And then I just wandered around. I went to Florida for a while. I worked on tugs down in Louisiana for a while. I had some good people come into my life. This one woman, her son had gone down to Louisiana. And she saw me wasting away. And she said, “You know, you can’t do this. You’ve got to go work down there on tugs and oil rigs. So I did. It was good. You know, [it] kind of got me out of this stuff. It really was just kind of a wandering around kind of thing. Trying to figure out what the hell’s going on. And I don’t know that it was a conscious thing. It was just like—but that’s what it was.
WC: Was part of the wondering around trying to figure out a place where you fit in? Because you didn’t feel like you fit in when you were back in New Hampshire so you were looking whether it was Louisiana where you could assimilate.
JL: I don’t know if it was trying to assimilate. I don’t know that it was a conscious sense of it. But it was just, I was restless. There was just this sense of having to wander, try things.
WC: Did you meet other vets when you were on the road?
JL: I met a couple on the tugs. One of them, well they both were kind of—one of them had his stomach was open. He actually carried his intestines to the medic. And they were put back together. But he was kind of a crazy guy. And he chased the other vet around the 15 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
ship a couple times, planning on stabbing him. (laughs) And so it got a little strange. But, other than that, no I don’t know that I met a lot of vets, or that we talked about it.
WC: To bring things up to the present, has the United States learned anything from the Vietnam War? And if yes, what is it.
JL: No. That’s the really dismal part of the whole thing. That’s why I think maybe this is a very important opportunity for people because nobody asks you about it. They don’t want to hear it. I talk about it all the time whether they want to know or not. But, the thing we haven’t learned. And it’s because we don’t have a foundation. If you’re playing football you have a rule book. And everybody can go and watch and get into their energy. And then walk away and come back and play again. Well, we have a rule book it’s called the Constitution. And this is something that’s new to me in the outlook since 2000, when we had an (??). When the Supreme Court interjected it’s self into the election process. And decided to take upon themselves the authority to select the president. At that point I thought, this is screwed and so, I picked up a Constitution. And then of course running for senate in 2004, I realized, I’m going to take an oath. And then I realized I took an oath. I already took an oath to preserve and protect the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies foreign and domestic. And I had forgotten about that. And I find that almost anybody I talk with they don’t have a clue what their oath was.
I find myself realizing that we’re repeating history. That history goes back ten-thousand years. It’s about the wealth and the powerful always trying to keep people distant from getting educated, and indoctrinated, and unable to think in a critical way about what’s going on. So now in this case, it’s corporations that have taken over our country. And it’s mind numbing to me that people don’t get that. Well, Lincoln said it well. Can I read that quote? Do you have that copy I gave you? I’ve got it in that copy. Because I think he understood it best you know. “I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.” And when I came across that I went, that’s now. That was Vietnam. It was probably World War II and World War I and (??).
WC: I hear a lot the phrase, Afghanistan is another Vietnam. Do you think there is some similarity between that stereotype?
[1:20:02]
JL: It’s exactly the same thing. We’re paying a million dollars a year for somebody to put on a uniform. But it doesn’t represent a million dollars going to that person that’s putting on a uniform. It represents all of the people that Eisenhower warned us about, the military industrial complex. And so people don’t understand that a million dollars, I mean goes someplace. We have a thousand bases roughly in 127 countries around the world. That’s 16 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
an empire and hegemony. The Project for New American Century made it clear that’s what they were about. The forces at work are sucking the resources out of everybody’s life, the opportunity for education, the opportunity to have a life. The trillions of dollars that we don’t even know where it went, there’s no accountability. There’s no justice system. We’ll put somebody in jail if they steal a video in a heartbeat. But you let them be a banker, or Wall Street, or corporate, or somebody that puts on a uniform, and shields for Fox News, or somebody like that. I mean that’s high crimes and misdemeanors just high crimes, not misdemeanors. Those are high crimes. There are laws called fraud. And all of your prosecuting attorneys— there’s a woman, Elizabeth De La Vega who wrote a book, United States v. George [W.] Bush et al. And she lays out a case for people to understand how the process works. And for them, conspiracy is not a nut job thing. It’s what they build their case on, people conspiring. But yet, you let people put it out in the public and talk about oh, you’re a conspiracy theorist. Yeah, you think?
WC: I think I remember when we first met there was a student club here on campus called, Student’s for Political Awareness. And it grew out of a group of students who didn’t want a college Republican or a college Democrat club. So much as they wanted a club that was politics neutral, one that would function more like, The League of Women Voters. The mission was to make people more aware of what was going on and then you can decide for yourself. We had Democrats there and Republicans there. And students asked the questions like, well what do the Democrats feel about abortion? Or what do Republicans feel about the Death Penalty? And you stood up in the crowed, I believe and you said, “How come you just have Democrats and Republicans here? As though the only choice is between this group and that group and there were a lot of us there and I think I fumbled all over myself, apologizing that I didn’t invite as many political candidates as possible. Because I was under the mind frame that there are two parties. It’s a two party system starting back in the early nineteenth century there were two parties. What you were doing is you were talking about how we increase the transparency and open a lot of this process up, so more of us know what is going on. And I still hear that same message from you today.
JL: Well, actually it’s taking form. And it comes down to; I mean that was one question but the question. I-Robot, the movie, I don’t know if you saw it, but the guy that gets killed but he comes up in a holograph and says, “That’s the wrong question.” We’re asking the wrong questions and I didn’t understand that back then either. If it aint about the Constitution it aint America. And the neat thing about this is— at least this is my feeling about it is. Every single person whether they’re in civil office, or political office, or the military, all take the same oath. I mean the treasurer, the town clerk, superintendent. They all take the same oath to preserve and protect the Constitution, or roughly the same oath. Before they take an oath to preserve and protect the state, it comes first and for most.
The question that I’m hoping that we as a nation— like I felt confident that I might have a chance to actually prevail in a US senate race if the public was educated. I wasn’t sure exactly what but that they were educated. But now I know it’s on the Constitution, and its history. And where it came from, how it evolved, what people put in. We are a nation of takers for the most part. Nobody’s really put anything into the game. When you consider 17 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
what these people did back then. You had a fellow stand up and say, “I regret I have but one life to give for my country,” when it didn’t even exist. It wasn’t even a country. But he had a dream of a country. He had a sense of it. For some reason thirteen colonies came together and this is why [US] history is so important. My book’s filled with historical narratives of this nation. I invite people to go on a personal journey to know the Constitution. But this constitution is the stepping off point to what’s really important because were discovering our humanity. We discover things along the way. Like the preamble begins with, “We the People” and ends with “do establish and ordain this Constitution for the United States of America.”
I’m putting forward a proposition that we need a constitutional convention to ratify. That we should all step up and ratify it and have enough knowledge of it to say, yes, I want to continue with this constitution. Or, I want to change it, or I want to get rid of it. We should be having that public debate going on every twenty years. So we then come to the table and we nationally come together and bring delegates together to bring forward that proposition to vote and to ratify it. And to bring in all amendments that we feel that will qualify and can pass muster to add to it. So it becomes organic for every generation. Then you’re not about political parties. I can invite anyone up to the table. I can invite a neo-Nazi up to the table and say, You’re welcome to step up to the plate, but you got to debate someone eighteen or younger on the Constitution. And you have to be willing to preserve and protect the Constitution. If you’re not willing to do that then you got nothing to bring to the table. I don’t care if you’re Republican, Democrat because really what you’ve got is two parties that dominate only because there all connected through the moneyed interest, like Abraham Lincoln is pointing out.
Really the foundational thing that needs to happen is there are two sets of things, you have systemic issues and you have specific issues. They keep us arguing about the specific issues. Screw the specific issues right now we’re not going to get anywhere with that. Go to the two foundational issues. One, we as a nation must learn the Constitution. We must demand of each other that we know it and understand it and have a good historical narrative to go with it. And two, we must get rid of the corporate interest in it and the special interest in monies. They should never be in our politics, because they’re working for me. I’m paying them a salary. That’s called, when I grew up that was bribery. So there’s no justice system because we’re not taking people to tasks for accepting bribes, just that one alone.
Then you get somebody that stands up and says, well we got a bill that’s coming forward and were putting in here a death panel, which is other bullshit it doesn’t exist. Was it Grassley that was a fraud? He perpetrated a fraud. You know when you and I talk we can lie to each other and there’s no harm no fowl really. Other than you and I probably won’t talk anymore, because we’ve shown ourselves to be liars. But you take this is different, now it’s growing into a bigger thing. It’s affecting students. It’s affecting community. It’s affecting the narrative. And that’s when you need to take people to task. Wait a minute that’s not right, that’s not true. Why are you saying that if that’s not true? We need to take that. And our children need to see that we are taking that to task. You get to be a mayor and you tell me something that is not true. You should be put in jail, because he 18 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
perpetrated a fraud against me. I’m acting as a citizen, and you’re lying to me. You’ve affected my life, my children’s life, and my community. Why aren’t these guys in jail, because we’re not showing up.
WC: The last formal question that I have is you’re trying to connect this awareness that you have. In the way that you have dedicated your life now to Vietnam, if that’s possible. Is there anything that grows the dots to be connected from your experience, living in that period, or being in the military that has increased your awareness to bring you to this new commitment that you have about saving the country today? What does Vietnam have to do with this?
[1:30:00]
JL: I’m not trying to save the country. It’s a personal journey I’m on. And I just want some company. (laughs) Because we don’t need heroes we’ve got to be done with that. But connecting the dots, there was a life that doesn’t exist for me anymore that I wanted. I mean, I would have been a farmer. I loved it. I loved all the aspects of it. You know, I didn’t like doing the gardening in our own private garden. But, I enjoyed the sense of what it meant to me, and Vietnam kind of ripped that away. But it ripped away my mother’s dedication to the truth, my father’s dedication to the truth that was instilled in me and it washed away. And I don’t think they understand. I don’t think the community understands. It was my mother, father drunk or sober, right, or wrong, mentality. And that’s not doing your children any good and your community, and your nation, and the rest of the world. So it’s really a matter of survival for me. You know I have a choice. I either stay with it or I give it up. If I give it up then I probably won’t be here much longer. So it’s a sustaining proposition for me. And I’ve got enough commitment from people as I go along to challenge me to stay around a little while longer. But not being able to have a home, you know a community. I mean, I live in a truck. I have a friend’s address and home that I use for an address. I had a house and I gave it up because I never got there. What’s the point? I’m sure that has a lot to do with not having a family.
My life’s been about children. I’ve always worked with them. I worked in the Division of Welfare, child abuse and neglect, and daycare. And had a chance to work in that arena on a Seta Project, because of Jimmy Carter for a year. And it was really illuminating. I don’t understand why it doesn’t tear people up when they look at what’s going to happen to our children because we don’t step up to the plate. And for some reason, I don’t know what the blind side is to embracing the truth, but we don’t want to. Chris Hedges, writes a really—can I kind of reference something here or do you want to go on a little bit more?
WC: War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.
JL: Yeah. And I was reading it this morning in preparation. I was kind of reviewing a lot of the stuff. And I haven’t read all of them. I kind of glanced through some of them. And you know, he’s so eloquent, because he’s been there. I mean he’s been on the ground. He’s felt that adrenaline rush, as he puts it that you get when you’re in that. This sense 19 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
that there’s something about men need to feel like that and maybe some women too. But it’s a beastly act. It’s just utter bestiality.
WC: We showed the film, The Hurt Locker a week ago.
JL: Which one?
WC: Hurt Locker. It won best film and best director. Hurt Locker was directed by, Kathryn Bigelow it was the first time a women won the best director award. We showed it as part of the history film night series that we just started last week. And that film begins with a quote from page three of Hedges’ book about war being a drug, being a narcotic that people feed off it. The main character in the film, there’s a great personification of this. Getting seduced by war and getting pulled further and further in. To the point where the character is completely unable to stand in the cereal aisle in the grocery store and pick out which box of cereal. When he goes to Baghdad and puts on the suit, he knows exactly what he’s doing. And that’s what war, that’s what the military has done to this individual.
JL: Yeah, it really— whether you are in combat or ancillary to it. I consider the whole society being in a state of PTSD. Mine is something that is constantly— I never thought of it as PTSD until I talked to— I belong to an organization called Veterans for Peace. And I joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War recently. I’m going to go visit them; they’re actually having a national thing Saturday. I’m going to be in Chicago, so I’m hoping to go to it.
Woody Powell is a Korean vet, and there’s something in his voice, his demeanor. When I joined the Veterans for Peace I spoke with them. And I just was drawn. It was like a blanket, a warm blanket put around you there’s something about it. And one day he said, “By the way, I want to thank you for your service.” And I cried. I literally just broke down and started crying. It was the first time that somebody thanked me. But it also washed over me that I was a war criminal. And so it was more tears of remorse. Because I was part of a war machine that slaughtered all of these people. It was part of that slaughter. And to say that it’s a war crime requires us to say to ourselves; well you’re a war criminal. I came up with a— I don’t know if it is unique to me, but I haven’t seen it anywhere, “I first must demand justice of myself before I can demand it of others.” Because I hear people [say], “Oh, I want George Bush.” Or I’ll hear people say, “Oh, I want Obama.” That’s a big part to me. You give me a nation of people who know the Constitution and I’ll show you people that are compassionate. And a people that are just. I’m tired of blaming the politicians or people who’ve taken a position of responsibility to try to do something in this insane environment that we live in. Or people that are at each other’s throats and religion plays such a big role in that. It’s time for each of us to stop and sit down and ponder our own lives. And when Woody did that I actually pondered my life in a way that I have not done before. It was just anger and trying to figure out where to go with it. And then all of the sudden, it was almost like a calm also. And I expressed to Woody, I said, “Thanks for that. But I also realize that you’re thanking me for being a war criminal.” And he laughed and said, “Well yeah, me too.”20 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
WC: Let me end by asking you, because you’re talking to students right now, but also the message is going to students in the future. If you have a message for that freshman out there, five, ten, or twenty years from now, what would you tell her or what would you tell him about your experiences? How might you guide them as they’re entering university life here right now or in the future.
JL: Um—somebody else probably said it but Russell Means, he’s a Native American from the American Indian movement back in ’72. I came across him talking about the American movement and he said that, “A nation that doesn’t know its history has no future.” So probably the most critical thing that anyone can do— I mean math, science, and everything else, but if you don’t know your history you don’t have a chance. You’re going to repeat and or make the mistakes that I made, because if I had known the Constitution and understood it. I would have told them to stick their war up their ass. No, I’m not going to blow up people or be part of that. And I’m going to do everything I can to stop you. This nation does not deserve a military defense. We don’t deserve it. We’re callus. We’re cruel. We’re calculating. We’re arrogant in our ignorance. We wear arrogance like it’s a badge of honor. And it’s the children and the women are the ones that suffer. We need to change. We need to grow up. We are a nation of people that are like eight year olds. We got big but we never grew up. And we’re playing with that same mentality and that same emotional direction that we get as an eight year old. Only, we’re playing with tools that are dangerous to the point of possible extinction.
So don’t put on uniform. Whatever you’re doing don’t do that. Not now, not until we get a constitutional republic. Then you can think about it. But that’s a long ways down the road. Because I got to tell you we didn’t have a military of any sort before World War II. Now the National Guard that’s a different thing [they’re] a well-regulated militia, fine. Because that’s family and friends, people are eating.
[1:40:01]
I’m not worried about them attacking me. But I am worried about this military being used. We’ve had this happened before, it’s called a civil war. If we don’t wake up, I don’t know. And I don’t like to project down the road. I try to stand on this path of hey here’s a constitution, here’s a constitution, and I sure hope we get to it.
WC: Thank you. Do you all have any questions that you would like to ask?
??: I have one. I really appreciate you touching on a little bit about what you could have done if you never would have gone to the Vietnam War, or been drafted. I would like you to develop a little bit more, what are other things that you regretted not having done because you were drafted.
JL: Well, probably the person that I would have been before that would have been somebody that was steeped in a lot of knowledge of history, but I wasn’t. I don’t know if I have a lot of regrets. Because it’s like, your life is your life. It is whatever it is. It’s what you do with your historical narrative. You can’t do anything about your history. Nobody can 21 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
except build on it. I want my historical narrative each day to be something that I can look at and point to and say, “I’m okay with this. I feel good about this or I’m very proud of this.” I want each day to be one that in some way I hope with compassion presents the narrative, because everybody is at a different level. I’ve been talking to a lot of people, mostly at just like an individual level so I don’t do too much damage. Because everyone’s coming from a background of narrative just like I did. I was indoctrinated that if you’re not Catholic you’re going to hell. You know what the hell is that? But that’s what it was. And maybe still is. If you’re not Baptist, if you’re not Mormon where do they get this insanity? The next best thing, you got the Scientologists now. They got things coming out of volcanoes or something, I don’t know. There is nothing that you can do about it. You just take that narrative and whatever’s left of my life. To me it’s committed to finding a way out. I think all of us need to help each other out in that process.
I’m a very private person generally. I like my solitude. I’m starting to get out more and more. I’ll probably be doing, Youtube. And that’s when people are either going to hate you a lot or love you a lot. And never be where the reality is of who you are. My sister thinks that I’m a progressive socialist Marxist something. (laughs) And I’m going, “I’m promoting the Constitution for God’s sake.” So we don’t talk. And I’m really sad about that, because I really love her. She’s a remarkable lady.
I just had a talk with a good friend, he’s Mormon. He’s a great guy. And we get engaged in a political conversation, the Glen Beck thing. I said, “You realize that he’s destroying your children’s future?” When someone oblique’s lies, promotes anger, or fear, hate, there’s nothing good that comes out of that except Nazism, or Stalinism, or isms. The only thing that comes out of that is anger, fear, and then you attack. People hurt each other. You lose the opportunity to build community. And that’s why we’re not building community. That’s why we’re destroying not only the community there but the community here. The cities that I go through, the devastation that I see you might as well drop bombs for all practical purposes. Because we have allowed a handful of people to contract, they say it’s a capitalist society. I say it’s not. It’s a society that is about our children. Anybody that just reads the preamble “We the People” it doesn’t say documented or undocumented. It doesn’t say citizen or non-citizen. It doesn’t say corporate. It says, “We the People of the United States.” If you’re here you’re an American. If you’re a student it doesn’t matter, whatever. While you’re here pick it up and read it. Make it yours. So there’s nothing I can do about my past except try to make my future a little bit better by what I do today.
WC: Any other questions?
?? : You mentioned quite a bit about drug use on the ship. But you also thought maybe it was a promoted thing?
JL: Oh, of course it was.
?? : How did that happen?22 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
JL: You’re trying to keep the people at home quelled, while you’ve got people that are getting written by people from home saying— and I’m watching Kent State. I’m watching Martin Luther King being killed. You’re seeing these things happen. And there’s no way that these drugs are going to be available just on their own. I will always be convinced and I’m sure that someday if we ever get the records out. Thank God for WikiLeaks. Knowledge is power. And they keep the knowledge to themselves. So they maintain a power. There’s no way that all of these kinds of drugs and stuff were available just because of guys. I mean they could have stopped us. My chief was never prouder of me when I came on and I went out. I didn’t drink much till I got in the Navy. And the guys took me out and I got so drunk that I ended up in somebody else’s car. And they found me before we took off. And I couldn’t stand up. I turned so ashen white that they had to take me to sick bay and pump me full of Vitamin B. I literally poisoned myself with so much alcohol. And my chief just put his hand on me and said, “What a man.” That was a measure of a man. So drugs, what the hell you know who cares. So long as we do our jobs, were placated, and we were quiet. Most of these people flying these missions came out with the reports on how they would have to take the drugs in order to keep flying. You can’t sit in that seat and fly the kind of hours that they’re flying and not have something to keep you going.
WC: Well Joe, thank you very much sir. You’ve done us a real service here at the University. You’ve helped provide the information for completing our knowledge about that period and about the present and future.
JL: Well thanks. Read the Constitution and know it. (laughs)
[1:47:37]
End of interview
i (NCO) Non Commission Officer
ii (AIT) Advanced Individual Training
iii (XO) Executive Officer

VIETNAM ERA ORAL HISTORY
TRANSCRIPTION COVER SHEET
Interviewee:
Joe LaBonte
Interviewer:
William W. Cobb Jr.
Date of Interview:
27 October 2010
Place of Interview:
George Sutherland Archives Orem, Utah
Recordist:
Brent Seavers
Recording Equipment:
Zoom Recorder H4n
Panasonic HD Video Camera AG-HM C709
Transcribed by:
Raili Bjarnson
Audio Transcript Edit:
Kimberly Williamson
Cover Summary:
Kimberly Williamson
Transcript proofed by:
Kimberly Williamson
Completed and Posted:
Reference:
WC=William W. Cobb Jr.(Interviewer)
JL=Joe LaBonte (Interviewee)
Brief Description of Contents:
Joseph LaBonte enlisted in the US Navy before he got drafted in 1968. He talks about his active duty from April 1969 until January 1972 on board an aircraft carrier working in operational electronics where he oversaw the communication between the ship and aircrafts. He explains his anger after the war and his personal journey in dealing with this resentment. Currently, Joseph LaBonte resides in Springville, Utah
NOTE: Interjections during pauses or transitions in dialogue such as "uh" and false starts and stops in conversations are not included in transcription. Changes by interviewee are incorporated in text. All additions to transcript are noted with brackets. Clarifications and additional information are endnoted.1 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
Audio Transcription
[24:26]
Beginning of interview
WC: Today is October 27, 2010. And I’m William Cobb a Professor of History at Utah Valley University. And we are interviewing today as part of the Vietnam Era Oral History project, Joe LaBonte. Joe, I would like to welcome you to the university campus. And I would like to start with just some general biographical questions and then get into some information pertaining to your life before you went into the military. So let me start with, please give me your full name and address.
JL: It’s Joseph K. LaBonte. 593 East 100 South Springville, Utah, 84663.
WC: Date of birth.
JL: 12-2-48
WC: And place of birth.
JL: Campton , New Hampshire. I grew up in Loudon, New Hampshire.
WC: This is a redundant question. Were you raised anywhere other than your place of birth?
JL: No. I was raised there until Vietnam, I was raised there.
WC: Married, children?
JL: No. Nope. There were a few times where it got close but never happened.
WC: Alright. Now to the before section of the interview. When you were in high school and or college, what were your feelings about the war in Vietnam?
JL: Well, the one that really comes to mind is a teacher. We called him, I don’t remember what his first name was, Moon Mullens. It was a geography class. And he spent a lot of time berating us and commiserating over the loss of his brother during Korea. And so the overall sense that I got was, Communism that’s bad, and we got to go after it. And I didn’t understand what that was about. It was just this guy getting angry about stuff and he had a problem with what happened to his brother. And I wanted to just get my class done in geography so I could move on. We actually got into a conflict at one point where I just walked out of his class.
WC: So move on in the sense of joining the military and fight Communism yourself.
JL: No, I mean I had John Wayne. I had all that stuff. My dad was in the Navy during World War II. Just at the very tail end of it. And up in the attic there were little things that I looked at that he had from the Seabees, and other emblems. So there was a sense of the 2 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
Navy and all of that, and getting connected to it. But I don’t ever remember really feeling any passion about Vietnam. It was a very distant thing, I didn’t understand it. I did understand that I was going to have to make a decision to either get drafted or join. So I selected, joining. And I joined the Navy so I wouldn’t get shot at. But other than any patriotism or sense of duty, no, I didn’t have that. My sense of most of the guys I met was they didn’t have it either. We were pretty much drafted in one way or another at that time. And you were stuck with it.
WC: What year did you graduate high school?
JL: I graduated in ’68.
WC: How much did you know about the war? It’s a pretty intense period in 1968. How much did you know?
JL: I didn’t follow it. I was busy, my passion was farming. I grew up 4-H, Boy Scouts. My mom kept us pretty busy. And I really love farming. I like being among the men. I think it’s a natural thing for young men to want to be around the men. And that’s where the men were. At a very young age I was constantly under foot. Finally a farmer put me to work. And I felt like I found a place of belonging. So my life was five in the morning until eight or nine o’clock at night farming. I wasn’t watching TV. I wasn’t paying attention to what was going on in the world around me. And when it came up to I had to join the selective service it’s at that point that I started paying some attention to it. Other than we did have one or two people that came back that were killed. So there was some attention to that. I don’t have memories of being engaged in what was going on there.
WC: To the extent that you had any knowledge or information about the war, can you remember where that primarily came from? Was it conversations with your parents around the dinner table? Or was it through Walter Cronkite, picking up a newspaper, or from some other source?
JL: Like I said, I really don’t have a memory of getting engaged in it that much. I remember conversations about McCarthy, and McCarthyism, and Communism, and some degree of understanding of what he had done to other people’s lives. But we weren’t really a political family. We really didn’t get into the discussions about any of this. I was in the country. I was living out in a little farming community.
[30:00]
All of that seems so distant to us, I think. It did to me. It wasn’t until after I actually joined that it became a reality. I’m not really sure what that reality meant to me until after I got into it about a year.
WC: So would it be fair to say, to the extent that you had conversations with your buddies in high school, it was more about being concerned about whether you were going to be drafted or whether you should enlist whether than the geo-political situation. 3 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
JL: Pretty much. We were too busy with the farming, and of course I was interested in girls. That’s going to the dances in Campton, New Hampshire. It’s all of the sudden I’m going from a little town, Loudon my first eight years of schooling. And then high school I had to go to Concord, which seemed like a big deal, and just trying to find a way to fit into the whole thing. And getting an interest in women, and how do you connect.
WC: Do you know what the feelings of friends and parents were, even though you didn’t talk about it very much. Was there some underlying sense of how your parents felt about the war, whether it was right or wrong? Or you know, Joe if you get drafted you better go do your service to your country.
JL: Pretty much yeah. It was really just about going. There was no conversation about not going. I was coming up to it and I had to make a decision. I don’t remember dad and I talking about it much, or mom and I talking about it much. About the only conversations I can really link to is, I know I didn’t want to get shot, didn’t want to shoot anybody. So, that’s the extent of my trying to figure out if it’s right or wrong. It really wasn’t. I came from a background of community, you had the World War I vets coming out at Memorial Day and doing their thing. And there was always the saluting the flag and the pledge of allegiance. So there was the whole indoctrination process that kept you connected to, we’re right. We’re supposed to be there so there’s no discussion. And [I] didn’t get a sense that there was really any room for discussion with my mom or dad about it or anybody else in the community for that matter. There was nobody that I knew that was organizing, or protesting, or making noise, or saying anything against it.
WC: Any conversation about what you might see on television, which by that point would show a pretty healthy antiwar sentiment in a number of places around the country.
JL: Yeah, it’s odd because I don’t remember seeing anything at that point. I remember seeing earlier on, the water canning of African Americans, and the dogs, and that sort of thing. But I’ve squirreled my head about this. And I don’t remember really getting connected to it. I don’t know that we watched a lot of TV. Like I said farming was almost like a seven day event. I don’t remember really having any feelings about it.
WC: Do you have a religious affiliation?
JL: Not anymore.
WC: Do you know if at that time to whatever the extent you had religious affiliation at the time that you were about ready to go into the military. Did that have any effect on your sense of obligation to military service. For example, if you were a Quaker or a Mennonite you might argue for conscientious status. Was there any affect that religion had on going into the military or not.
JL: No, I grew up Catholic, my mom. My dad, he called himself a home Baptist. He’d take his dogs out hunting or something like that. If he wanted to go and have his commune 4 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
with whatever high power he thought of. Once in a while he would go down to the minister at the local Baptist church and visit with him. You know our whole setting was really very small farming community, tight knit. And connected to country right or wrong, mother drunk or sober kind of thing. There was no questioning that whole process. And Catholicism, I kind of backed away from that. I guess when I was about fourteen. It just didn’t make sense to me. I was always asking questions. And I kind of drove my parents a little nuts from time to time. But things like, If God’s all-knowing and God’s all-seeing. Why are we doing this? And so on and so forth. And eventually I just had no desire to go. Mom had us go because it was a community thing. And I have good memories of it. Coming home every Sunday and going to visit Aunt Alice and Uncle Milo. She would be bringing fresh baked bread out of the oven, and butter that had just been churned by hand from one of the farmers up the road, and Aunt Addy. So there was this sort of staying connected to family. My grandparents lived in Loudon. So everybody was like an auntie and an uncle. You couldn’t really go anywhere without mom knowing where you were. And if you didn’t show up she knew you weren’t where you’re supposed to be. And so it was really a protective kind of environment that wasn’t suppressive. It really is interesting considering all the different places I would go in the community and how much interaction I had in the community. There was absolutely no conversation about that there’s anything thing wrong with what we’re doing. And that would be the thing I think that would stick out for me.
WC: Coming at Vietnam a little bit differently, were you familiar with Southeast Asia itself. For example, with its geography or it’s philosophy, society, literature, history, traditions—
JL: Not really—
WC: you didn’t study that in your geography class?
JL: No we were too busy talking about his brother getting killed in North Korea. So we never really got into geography that I can remember. And for the most part, the classes that meant anything to me were maybe choir and biology. But my sense of education was one that, kind of pushing you towards, I think they kind of looked at you and went well, you’re college material or you’re not, at a very early age. And when they decided you weren’t they kept pushing you into your going to go into the factory [and] be a worker approach. So I don’t know if we got into any intellectual conversations. And I was going to Concord. It was like a whole new world. And it took me four years to figure it out and by the time I did it was too late. I just don’t get a sense of intellectualism back then. I do get a sense of driving my dad a little bit nuts because I would critically go at things when we talked about things, and he wasn’t interested in that. It’s what I say is what you’ll do and that sort of thing. So I think we were kind of hand strung in regards to Southeast Asia. Well, actually anywhere else, I mean Boston, Massachusetts. The auctioneer that I worked for, going down to Boston to pick up a bunch of stuff and bring it up. I probably wouldn’t have known much about New Hampshire until after joining the service. 5 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
WC: Tell me a little more about joining the military. You mentioned this a little bit before, why did you enter in the military?
JL: I had a choice. I mean I didn’t have a choice. You’re going to get drafted. So either you’re going to get drafted or you’re going to choose a path. I had pretty high battery test scores. So I went to the Navy. The guy said, “We want to get you into electronics.” They actually wanted me to sign me up for an additional two years to go into nuclear. I said, “You have four years. I’ll be glad to go but I’m not giving you two more years of my life.” That much I knew. I was pretty strong about. If I had a choice, I didn’t want to go. Burning my draft card was certainly not a choice. Anything like that you know it wasn’t going to happen.
WC: You touched on this a little bit but I would like to ask you again. At that time, before you went on to active duty, what was your sense of patriotism in service to country?
JL: I don’t think I had any. There was no sense of duty to the country. It was more like an obligation that I have to go and do this thing. I don’t know that I had a sense of country. I had a sense of (??) environment that I lived in. And I know I did kind of try to figure out how did the two come together in terms of my family. And the only way it came together was that certainly my father and I think maybe my mother maybe had been a little reluctant.
[40:00]
But at that time, women were pretty subservient to the male in most families where I grew up. And if she had any concerns, she probably didn’t voice them. But rather consigned herself to as I did, that this has to happen. I don’t ever remember having a sense of patriotism. I’d watch John Wayne. I’d watch these other movies and stuff like that. And you’d sort of get a sense of it but that was a movie. The real connectedness, I didn’t get a sense of the Constitution. I didn’t get a sense of the historical narrative. I think it was very simplistic. George Washington cut down a cherry tree. Whatever the heck that means, so on and so forth. But there was no definitive kind of cement or glue that bound that together for you.
WC: At some point your draft status made you eligible. And then you would have gotten a notice to report for a physical. And then you would have gotten a notice to report for basic training, and then to advanced training, and then to your first duty station. Was there any point along that chain of events that you ever considered not going? Like when you got your notice to report for basic training. I think you said you were base training in the Great Lakes region. Did you ever think, I really can’t do this, so close to go from the Great Lakes across the border into Canada? I don’t have a sense of patriotism. I’m just going to skip out.
JL: No, it never even occurred to me. It was more like this adventure that was outside of my knowledge sphere that I had at that point. Kind of like, my mom would white knuckle it on an airplane ride. And me, once I’m on the plane (laughs) that’s it, and I kind of 6 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
consign myself to it. And then I start talking to people or look out the window. Once the journey begins and there’s no turning back then I kind of embrace it. And so, I embrace that part of it, and going to the Great Lakes. And you know all of that was getting me out into the bigger picture. But it was not a sense of patriotism or anything like that. It was more the case—and I think that’s the case with most young people, there are some that do that perhaps do it out of a sense of dedication of patriotism or something. I think maybe it’s more of something like; I get to step outside of this world I know into a bigger world. So I kind of just embraced the whole thing all along the way. In the back of my mind is, just so long as I don’t end up going to Vietnam and end up getting shot at or shoot somebody I can work with this.
WC: When you were in basic training or advanced training, did you often talk with fellow service men or NCOsi or training instructors, or officers about Vietnam? From the perspective of informal conversation in the barracks or formal, as we used to call them, blocks of instruction where people would teach you how to use a weapon. Or they might have a block of instruction, where, here’s the history of Vietnam. So you know we are fighting this monolithic form of Communism over there. Was there any formal or informal conversation about the purpose of Vietnam, or anything like that when you were in basic [training] or AIT?ii
JL: No. I don’t remember that. I remember we were F-troop. We had this company commander that was desperately trying to get us to perform. You know they have this whole thing about you get flags each week. Everybody’s bunk was tight. And everybody‘s stuff was stuffed in a locker, right. And all of these different things that try to mold a cohesive unit and we utterly failed him. Constantly, I think we were in for eleven weeks or something like that and we just constantly failed him. To the point where the brigade commander had to come down and say, “What is the deal?” I mean, the brigade commander. This guy is coming down and asking us, “What’s it going to take? This guys the best company commander we’ve got. And you guys are failing him. And you’re failing yourselves so what are you going to do?” And this little mousey voice in the back, and this kid, we called him mouse, “We want more coke and smoke. (laughing) We want more (??). We want more talking to mom and dad on the phone.” He said, “You got it.” I mean we negotiated with the Navy. (laughs) And we done it, and we performed, and then we got some flags, and he was happy and everything. But we never talked about Vietnam. We never talked about anything. We were too busy just trying to figure out how are we going to pull this together. And he’s trying all these different methods to try to create a cohesive unit. He’s just not making it happen. So we were more focused on that, and then where were we going?
There was one kid that ended up getting real sick, I think, he had some intestinal problems or something. All of us were sick. The whole tar mat was green with people just flem, from being sick from the change in climate. January, in the Great Lakes is not the best time to (laughs) go to boot camp. It’s just like totally frigid. I don’t remember us talking about it, or the great cause, or those Communists. I didn’t get that. 7 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
WC: Now do you not know the sense of inedibility, I’m in the military so I guess I’m going to go to Vietnam. So I got to reconcile myself to, I hope I live through this. Was there any of that?
JL: There was that. I mean, being in the Navy you kind of said okay, I’m going to be on a boat. I mean that’s where your head was at. The rest of the time you’re trying to go through trying to stay on top of whatever is going on that day. We had a couple of times when they did a blanket party. You probably don’t— well a blanket party for the sake of the tape is if somebody’s messing up in the unit. And you get a little wink and a nod from the company commander that this person is messing it up for everybody. And somehow there’s this knowledge of this thing called a blanket party. Where basically there is a bunch of guys will take a blanket and just wrap it over the person so they can’t move, and then they started beating him, through the blanket. And I remember the feeling I had when I was listening to that. That I felt rather cowardly that I didn’t go to his defense. It made me feel kind of bad that— because then I thought well maybe they’ll do that to me. So that was kind of the first time I kind of had to come up to this sense of courage or lack of it. That’s the thing I felt. And I felt bad for him. You don’t get hurt very badly when that happens, I guess. But it’s scary than hell. Because within your own unit now all of the sudden you’re setting on each other. And now you’re not so sure what you can trust. But I think for my part, and whatever conversations I had with most folks. We weren’t really interested in this thing. But we were interested enough in this thing we were going through. You know it was a unique experience. And then going from boot camp to finding out my duty station was on an aircraft carrier, all right, no bullets there. I’m okay (laughs) because Vietnam doesn’t have planes that can go out and blowup air carriers and that. So I was a happy camper about that.
WC: So this carrier you’re on a training carrier in Pensacola. Tell me the dates that you were on that carrier. It must have been up to the point where you were separated from active duty when your entire tour was on that ship.
JL: Yeah. Let’s see. I went in January 23 to boot camp— eleven weeks. So it was sometime either late March, early April when I reported. I had two weeks to go home and say hi to the family. I don’t remember much about that. You know what’s to talk about? I’m going to do this thing. And then showing up at this aircraft carrier and I don’t know if any of you guys, if you’ve ever seen an aircraft carrier. And this was an old World War II vintage aircraft carrier. It was huge. I walked up to this thing and went, woo I’m going to get lost in this thing. And they know you’ll get lost so they set it up. They put you on chow duty or something like that and they keep you kind of in a central area. Then you can kind of explore out until you kind of get a sense of what you’re doing.
WC: What was your military occupational specialty on that ship?
JL: I was operational electronics. Initially, because I didn’t want to go to nuke school I was a seaman. Seaman rating is pretty much going to be something to do with the ship and that sort of thing. Then they have an air dale rating. And that means you’re going to be working with flight crews, helicopters, that sort of thing working on the flight deck 8 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
perhaps. And they changed my rating to air dale after I refused to go to boot camp, I mean nuclear school.
[50:00]
And my rating was helicopter hydraulic mechanic. And that kind of put a scare into me because that basically said I’m going to Vietnam.
WC: Helicopter.
JL: Oh, Yeah. So now I am going oh, man this is got a lot of no good. Well, I ended up on the mess decks and I make friends with the cooks. And one of them says, “Hey, wanna be a cook?” I went okay, what does that mean? “Two weeks on, two weeks off.” I’m going, really that’s cool I said. But you got to change your rating back to seaman, ah that’s too bad. (laughs) I get my rating back to seaman, which means I’m not going into any helicopters again. So while I’m on the mess decks one of my buddies, we’d all kind of moved on. I was down there as a cook, I liked cooking. I enjoyed it. It was pretty good. But he had gone to electronics on the job. And there was this Chief Mellish, he was not a very tall man, but he was the senior enlisted man on the ship. He was like a commander really. He was at all the meetings. He was on his twilight tours, last duty station. He’d been in for twenty-six years. He’s going to do two more [years] and then go state side for his last two [years] for his thirty. And he said, “Hey.” We talked. What’s it like, electronics? That sounds kind of cool. He said, “Well it’s pretty good.” I said, “Do you got anymore openings?” Yes they do. I went up talked with him. So, I ended up in electronics on the job training. I ended up with the rating of petty officer third class, which is just above seaman. I worked on radar. I was in charge of ship to air communications for the aircraft. I start seeing twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two’s. Several mechanics you know. It’s like none of this stuff we have now. It’s like really old school stuff. And so it’s great. After the second year on the ship, I knew that was it. I’m not going to Nam. And it was a great feeling, and it was also kind of a bad feeling, because I knew that there were people that did go that didn’t want to go.
WC: Were there people who rotated onto the ship who had been to Vietnam.
JL: Yeah, there were a few guys that came on.
WC: Tell me about them. You didn’t talk about it? They didn’t talk about it?
JL: No. It’s like most vets. They really don’t want to talk about it generally.
WC: How about those of you who hadn’t been? Were you pretty curious about what it was like over there?
JL: No. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to know. I knew it was there and I didn’t want any part of it. 9 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
WC: Describe a typical good day on duty. Then I’m interested in what would a bad day look like on the ship?
JL: Well a good day is clear skies and good wind, because a lot of our work was the radar systems. So everything flowing, traffics moving nice, aircrafts are going well. There’s no real problems and if there are [problems] you’re able to come up with the solutions. And being in the electronic spaces, which were air conditioned, we always found a reason to be there, because the rest of the ship was not. Where I slept, we slept right forward of the resting cable steam room. They used steam to retract the cables. And in the summer it could be 120 degrees in there. And you learned to sleep in it. The whole process of seniority was the guys that were most senior get to sleep in the electronic spaces. They’d take a mattress up there (laughs) and set up shop. And so as the rotation happened you looked for your opportunity to get into one of those spaces.
And a good day was when we were in the middle of a hurricane. We had to leave port and go out into the hurricane. And I remember my feet being propped up while we’re shifting. And an aircraft carrier isn’t going to move a lot. I mean we had fifty-foot waves. I remember being in the secondary con right in the nose of where the flight deck ends. And we’re going through preparing it in case they have to come down there, making sure the electronics is all up. We went through; somebody barfed in the chart drawers. (laughs) We had to clean that up. But it was really a magnificent moment because you’re looking out these port holes. I mean you’re right there. And these waves are just crashing up over you. So there were times like that. Those were kind of good days because they broke the monotony, they were exciting moments. You look at the expansion joints, like you’d see on a bridge. There’s two of them on an aircraft carrier’s airside. You have to have them it has to be the flex. And they’d open up like this (does hand motion) and you’re looking down into the hanger bay. And then there coming back together. So you kind of have to time you’re walking across. You get your foot in there and you done. You like to have some excitement. But I still didn’t want to go and get shot, or shoot somebody. I didn’t want that kind of excitement.
The bad days came about when Chief Mellish left. This is a man that I would have followed anywhere. Anyone of us would have, because he was that kind of man that understood how to command respect from everybody, because he respected everybody. If there was a problem he resolved it. If he had a problem, we fixed it for him. Sometimes in ways he wasn’t really happy with, but he appreciated the fact. Like, he needed a couple of mattresses for some new guys that were coming in. Well, we went down to the master at arms area and we stole a couple of mattresses from master at arms. Those guys weren’t happy about that. And they were pretty sure we took them. So Chief Mellish had to deal with them. And he came in later and he says, “You know, I love you guys. I love what you’re doing, but please don’t steal from the master at arms.” (laughs) So he was a really cool guy. But then when he left we ended up with a bunch of assholes. I mean even really the whole ship knew it. They had a bow-diddly show. Guys would go down and set up these different— and they would talk about how a first class petty officer broke his nose today because the chief warren officer made an abrupt halt. And he broke his nose on his ass. (laughter) But those guys made our lives miserable. We’re out there working, we’re 10 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
doing the work. And then we’d go to lunch and they come in and they collect all our gear. And then they’d have us chipping paint, chipping paint. We’re electronic technicians. What a total waste of time and resource. So we got into a little pissing match with them. They would take our stuff so we’d take theirs. We had this one first class petty officer, and he’d been in like his whole life, getting ready to leave, and we threw his coffee cup over the side. We threw their hats over the side. We’d throw their tools over the side. Anything they left behind, it went over the side. And one guy was even going to put some acid, because we were doing drugs back then, big time. I’m quite confident the military was making sure they were available. When I went in there was only one guy doing drugs. When I left there was probably one guy that wasn’t. And we had to hold him back and said, “No man you can’t do that.” So instead he rubbed his penis around in his cup and we watched him drinking out of this cup. (laughing) That was bad days because we shouldn’t be doing this stuff. I mean we had guys that— like one guy. He would play four of us at chess blindfolded. He won one, drew on two, and he lost one blindfolded. I mean, these were the cream of the cream, kind of. And this is the best that you, as a leader can come up with. Is to have us go down to the bowels of the ship of some obscure, like the gyroscope locker and chip paint. So that’s when things got bad. You know it got stupid.
WC: This is a period in which discipline is falling apart everywhere in Vietnam and everywhere else. How about race issues on the ship, especially after Martin Luther King was killed?
JL: Well for me, I came from an all-white community except for one Black family. And he was in Pease Air Force Base, he was in the military. And I came from a family we had a Black dentist. And I think I hope I’m right about this. I asked my brother, and he said, “Yeah, we had a Black dentist,” which is very unusual at that time. And my dad was the kind of guy, when he passed away there was probably four or five-hundred people showed up at this little church. I didn’t know who they were. He was very out there. I mean this guy had to know what was going on in everybody’s life. Not like he had to know. But if he hadn’t heard from you he went to see how you were.
[1:00:00]
He cared. He cared a lot about community. He also was a tennis player. He was a jock and I wasn’t which I think was a big disappointment for him. But I just wasn’t into that. Well he invited this doctor to come and get a membership at this little Bow Brook club, just two courts. It wasn’t like exclusive, exclusive or big shot. It was the working class Bow club kind of thing. And I think he ran into a lot of friction with people. “You can’t bring a Black guy in here.”
WC: What kind of club?
JL: A tennis club. And it seems to me that I remember dad prevailing saying, “He’s got to have one.” And he got one for him but I’m sure he never used it. So those were the kind of things that were kind of foundational for me going in on an aircraft carrier. And this is 11 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
diversity that I didn’t know existed. Which was wonderful, I was like, woe. And I was curious as hell to learn about all these different people. I didn’t come in with any stuff. And it would blow me away. We would be working with different cultures together it was all mixed up. You had African Americans. You had Hispanics. You had Native Americans. But then you’d get them apart and you’d find that there were those [individuals] that they just hated them. And I didn’t understand that. Why? What is it? Well, because he’s Black. He’s Filipino, whatever, you know. And I’d go, “I don’t get it. That’s it. There’s nothing behind it.” So for me it was great. You know it opened up a whole new world for me by being on that aircraft carrier that has been foundational to what my life has been about since. And has allowed me to really reach into other cultures and communities in a way that is kind of childlike it’s kind of like, I just want to learn.
WC: All the time that you were on the ship did conversations about the war because the war was starting to go through a period of Vietnamization and Nixon was talking about bringing more men and women home. Peace with honor is in sight. And so, as you got further into your active duty were there anymore conversations about the war, given that it’s seemed like there was some light at the end of the tunnel?
JL: My light at the end of the tunnel was this picture. There was this woman with naked breasts that I would color in each day that went by. Until I got to the last one, which meant I was out. And that was for the most part. We were occupied with these idiots that didn’t know how to lead. I mean I’d watched guys that had been in for fifteen years and they left because of these guys. I had one chief that put his hands around my neck, because I just really pissed him off. And I just went, “Go for it.” And yet he watched my back. I remember all these other things, but I don’t remember any of us really— all of us just wanted to get out. I think if there’s any sense of this conflict, I think universally we felt it was stupid. I don’t think we ever really said that, but I just feel like when I take a look at where all of us were going. You know the drugs, the alcohol. And not all, there were family guys there, which I really didn’t know that well, although I dated one of his sisters one time. But, no, we didn’t really get into it at all. I don’t remember us getting into it at all.
WC: Did the Stars and Stripes come in big stacks on board the ship everyday so people would sit around read the news or turn on the TV?
JL: Maybe, I didn’t read it. The other shining moment, which became a disastrous moment a little later on. Was, we had our executive officer was in (?). So they took one of the yawls that (??) was going to throw away. And we brought it up on deck and went through the whole thing, and we pulled all the cocking. A handful of us, it was probably about five or six of us that just tore into this thing. And we cleaned it up, and we sanded it, we painted it. And we put it in the water and it became one of the fastest yawls out there. And we had it for one month in the water and then ( ??) decided to take it back. And I remember us talking about going down there and setting it on fire. And we didn’t. But we came close because we made it that was our boat. And that was always a great time because we spent like two years working on this thing. It was so much fun. And the XOsiii down there with us and he’s one of the buds. And we just can’t wait. And we finally get it into 12 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
the water and it’s like, ah it’s beautiful. And standing out there, hanging onto a forward halyard and just standing on the bow bench and the waters splashing up over you. And it’s like, Ah, this is so good and a little squalls coming out so you get to test her out.
And then they took it away. I felt pretty bad about that. And it’s kind of representative of what’s going on today, they’re taking it away. They’re taking it away. And I want the bastards. You know it’s one thing that started getting angry for me. It’s when I started really getting pissed off about shit. And the only way I could manage my anger was doing some more drugs and alcohol. And it stayed with me probably for about five or six years after I got out, in a big way. Because, I think we also got a sense that they bullshitted us. And I felt in a sense deceived by my community at this point.
A little later on I started feeling like, wait a minute. What I had been taught by my mother. I stole a Chunkys candy bar, and I wouldn’t give any to my three year old brother. So I go to school my mom finds out, I come home. And I can feel it before I even enter the door. Before I even put my hand on the door handle, I can feel it. I walk in and my mother’s sitting at the kitchen table. The sun was setting behind her. So all I get is a sense of her kind of washed in with this [light]. And then, “Go to your room.” And it was like, uh-oh, I’m in trouble, big trouble. I mean you’re in trouble when you’re a kid, but you know you’re going to survive it. This is like; you’re wondering if you’re going to survive this. And the next morning I’m down there and I’m confessing that I stole this candy bar. And my mom’s standing there and I didn’t know, but I’m sure they organized this thing. And she’s furious. And she looks at the shop keeper and says, “What do we do?” And he says, “Well I don’t know. We have to ask the constable here.” We didn’t have police at that time we had a constable. And he said, “Well, usually we would take someone that steals and we put them in handcuffs. And we take them down to the jail and we finger print them. Put them in front of the judge and he would decide what to do with this theft.” (laughs) I’m a seven year old kid. I’m melting on the floor here. I’m in tears. So she looks at me like really angry and then looks at them and they’re going around on this thing on me. And I’m just, I don’t know, blubbering. And I remember this one guy. I can see his face, but I can’t remember his name. He steps out and he’s feeling pity for me. And I’m feeling like all is lost. I mean, mom’s abandoning me. She wants me to go to jail. This whole thing is just falling apart. And this guy steps out and he says, “Well, Dot at least he confessed.” Oh, man she turned on him and gave him the biggest eyes and said, “The little shit did not. You mind your own God damned business.” I never heard my mom swear before. So that was a big deal. And then she glared at me. And he melted back into the crowed. There was maybe ten or fifteen people. So then eventually the outcome was well Joe, are you going to steal again? The constable said, “Put it back on the shopkeeper, it’s up to them if they want to press charges.” So I got a real education in the justice system and how it works. And they said, Are you ever going to steal again Joe?” And I said, “No.” I mean adamantly and I never did.
It became apparent to me, I mean it became solid that life is about justice, and it’s about the truth. And I was abandoned by my community when I ended up going in. Instead of them doing what they should have done, which is to say, “Hell no.” We haven’t declared war. It’s unconstitutional. You have no right to do this unless you can show us clear 13 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
evidence not ideologies, but evidence that there is some cause to go into another country and slaughter all these people. And lose all of these lives of our own. So I was pretty lost about the whole thing by the time I got out of the Navy.
WC: Were these feelings that began to bubble up—
JL: Oh yeah—
WC: as you were getting separated from or discharged from.
JL: Well, I’d go home.
[1:10:00]
This is what it is for vets. This is why their homeless, generally. I’m convinced of this. We want to go home. Home is what I grew up with honesty, integrity, a sense of principals, and so forth. And these conflicts are not. And you come out the other side and you try to go back home and you can’t. You try to address that and you can’t. I can’t go home now. I tried to talk to my family and my sister and I don’t even talk anymore. Because I can’t let go of this until there is justice. I was part of a war machine that slaughtered five-million people, which seems like such a stupid thing to say. I mean, I can’t wrap my head around that. When you melt it down to a child and a mother and then they’re gone, they’re in a field and then they’re gone. And that means nothing to us? Even today that means nothing to us. You’ve got what is it, sixty-four, five-hundred people that have committed suicide? Soldiers have committed suicide, since Iraq and we wonder why. And that’s more than have been killed in the field. So, I didn’t understand. I was just angry. I didn’t have that kind of understanding. I mean I’d go home. We’d talk about, hey, we could have world peace. I mean I was on aircraft carrier where we did. Everyone didn’t get a long as family, but we could do this thing. We could really do this. And instead I got, what’s wrong with you? Your father’s got a house. He’s got a family. What’s wrong with you, you disrespect him. And I’m going I’m not disrespecting dad.
I had an uncle— I mean, everyone was kind of like an uncle and an auntie, whether the people were related or not. That’s how you looked at them. Or they were Grandma or Grandpa. That was a little island of what used to be and needs to be again. And most young people don’t have that anymore.
I was doing the drugs and the alcohol because I wasn’t getting anywhere. I don’t know if it was just that, but I wasn’t getting the relief. I was angry. I didn’t serve in combat. But I was angry, just really viscously angry about things. And I was probably suicidal for a while with the drugs and alcohol. I remember waking up one morning and going, you know if I do this again tonight, I won’t be here tomorrow. So I had to make a choice between whether or not I wanted to live or not. And I decided I wanted to [live]. And I think a part of that was because my sister got me into a youth theater program. I was into theater in a big way. Because I found that everyone else was weird. So theaters great because the weirder you are, the stranger you are the more you can grow. Because you let 14 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
go of the control part of it and you’re really letting it happen. And so I did some community theater. I found a place there. I found some great people to work with. Frank (??) was really excellent in terms of building sets and stuff. I liked the technical end of it. But my sister got me into a youth theater program up in Hanover, New Hampshire. And we did, Jesus Christ Super Star. That’s the first one they were doing. They’d been working on it for six months before I got there, which is really weird because it’s a community theater program kind of. But they had all these kids. And he was integrating babies through the hosanna scenes and it was fascinating. You had people from the college that played the instruments. And you had the congregational minister play Peter. So, it was just like this whole mix. But the kids bring such vitality. Young people would bring all this vitality. So at least it kind of helped put things on hold a little bit.
WC: You were discharged in January of ’72.
JL: ’72 yeah.
WC: These feelings began to bubble up right away—
JL: Well I had them before I got out.
WC: before you got back to New Hampshire?
JL: The last year and a half, like I said, when I first went in maybe one guy was doing drugs. By the time we left we all were except one. It was just a way of life. Drugs are about, it’s medicine. You’re just trying to maintain. And then I just wandered around. I went to Florida for a while. I worked on tugs down in Louisiana for a while. I had some good people come into my life. This one woman, her son had gone down to Louisiana. And she saw me wasting away. And she said, “You know, you can’t do this. You’ve got to go work down there on tugs and oil rigs. So I did. It was good. You know, [it] kind of got me out of this stuff. It really was just kind of a wandering around kind of thing. Trying to figure out what the hell’s going on. And I don’t know that it was a conscious thing. It was just like—but that’s what it was.
WC: Was part of the wondering around trying to figure out a place where you fit in? Because you didn’t feel like you fit in when you were back in New Hampshire so you were looking whether it was Louisiana where you could assimilate.
JL: I don’t know if it was trying to assimilate. I don’t know that it was a conscious sense of it. But it was just, I was restless. There was just this sense of having to wander, try things.
WC: Did you meet other vets when you were on the road?
JL: I met a couple on the tugs. One of them, well they both were kind of—one of them had his stomach was open. He actually carried his intestines to the medic. And they were put back together. But he was kind of a crazy guy. And he chased the other vet around the 15 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
ship a couple times, planning on stabbing him. (laughs) And so it got a little strange. But, other than that, no I don’t know that I met a lot of vets, or that we talked about it.
WC: To bring things up to the present, has the United States learned anything from the Vietnam War? And if yes, what is it.
JL: No. That’s the really dismal part of the whole thing. That’s why I think maybe this is a very important opportunity for people because nobody asks you about it. They don’t want to hear it. I talk about it all the time whether they want to know or not. But, the thing we haven’t learned. And it’s because we don’t have a foundation. If you’re playing football you have a rule book. And everybody can go and watch and get into their energy. And then walk away and come back and play again. Well, we have a rule book it’s called the Constitution. And this is something that’s new to me in the outlook since 2000, when we had an (??). When the Supreme Court interjected it’s self into the election process. And decided to take upon themselves the authority to select the president. At that point I thought, this is screwed and so, I picked up a Constitution. And then of course running for senate in 2004, I realized, I’m going to take an oath. And then I realized I took an oath. I already took an oath to preserve and protect the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies foreign and domestic. And I had forgotten about that. And I find that almost anybody I talk with they don’t have a clue what their oath was.
I find myself realizing that we’re repeating history. That history goes back ten-thousand years. It’s about the wealth and the powerful always trying to keep people distant from getting educated, and indoctrinated, and unable to think in a critical way about what’s going on. So now in this case, it’s corporations that have taken over our country. And it’s mind numbing to me that people don’t get that. Well, Lincoln said it well. Can I read that quote? Do you have that copy I gave you? I’ve got it in that copy. Because I think he understood it best you know. “I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.” And when I came across that I went, that’s now. That was Vietnam. It was probably World War II and World War I and (??).
WC: I hear a lot the phrase, Afghanistan is another Vietnam. Do you think there is some similarity between that stereotype?
[1:20:02]
JL: It’s exactly the same thing. We’re paying a million dollars a year for somebody to put on a uniform. But it doesn’t represent a million dollars going to that person that’s putting on a uniform. It represents all of the people that Eisenhower warned us about, the military industrial complex. And so people don’t understand that a million dollars, I mean goes someplace. We have a thousand bases roughly in 127 countries around the world. That’s 16 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
an empire and hegemony. The Project for New American Century made it clear that’s what they were about. The forces at work are sucking the resources out of everybody’s life, the opportunity for education, the opportunity to have a life. The trillions of dollars that we don’t even know where it went, there’s no accountability. There’s no justice system. We’ll put somebody in jail if they steal a video in a heartbeat. But you let them be a banker, or Wall Street, or corporate, or somebody that puts on a uniform, and shields for Fox News, or somebody like that. I mean that’s high crimes and misdemeanors just high crimes, not misdemeanors. Those are high crimes. There are laws called fraud. And all of your prosecuting attorneys— there’s a woman, Elizabeth De La Vega who wrote a book, United States v. George [W.] Bush et al. And she lays out a case for people to understand how the process works. And for them, conspiracy is not a nut job thing. It’s what they build their case on, people conspiring. But yet, you let people put it out in the public and talk about oh, you’re a conspiracy theorist. Yeah, you think?
WC: I think I remember when we first met there was a student club here on campus called, Student’s for Political Awareness. And it grew out of a group of students who didn’t want a college Republican or a college Democrat club. So much as they wanted a club that was politics neutral, one that would function more like, The League of Women Voters. The mission was to make people more aware of what was going on and then you can decide for yourself. We had Democrats there and Republicans there. And students asked the questions like, well what do the Democrats feel about abortion? Or what do Republicans feel about the Death Penalty? And you stood up in the crowed, I believe and you said, “How come you just have Democrats and Republicans here? As though the only choice is between this group and that group and there were a lot of us there and I think I fumbled all over myself, apologizing that I didn’t invite as many political candidates as possible. Because I was under the mind frame that there are two parties. It’s a two party system starting back in the early nineteenth century there were two parties. What you were doing is you were talking about how we increase the transparency and open a lot of this process up, so more of us know what is going on. And I still hear that same message from you today.
JL: Well, actually it’s taking form. And it comes down to; I mean that was one question but the question. I-Robot, the movie, I don’t know if you saw it, but the guy that gets killed but he comes up in a holograph and says, “That’s the wrong question.” We’re asking the wrong questions and I didn’t understand that back then either. If it aint about the Constitution it aint America. And the neat thing about this is— at least this is my feeling about it is. Every single person whether they’re in civil office, or political office, or the military, all take the same oath. I mean the treasurer, the town clerk, superintendent. They all take the same oath to preserve and protect the Constitution, or roughly the same oath. Before they take an oath to preserve and protect the state, it comes first and for most.
The question that I’m hoping that we as a nation— like I felt confident that I might have a chance to actually prevail in a US senate race if the public was educated. I wasn’t sure exactly what but that they were educated. But now I know it’s on the Constitution, and its history. And where it came from, how it evolved, what people put in. We are a nation of takers for the most part. Nobody’s really put anything into the game. When you consider 17 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
what these people did back then. You had a fellow stand up and say, “I regret I have but one life to give for my country,” when it didn’t even exist. It wasn’t even a country. But he had a dream of a country. He had a sense of it. For some reason thirteen colonies came together and this is why [US] history is so important. My book’s filled with historical narratives of this nation. I invite people to go on a personal journey to know the Constitution. But this constitution is the stepping off point to what’s really important because were discovering our humanity. We discover things along the way. Like the preamble begins with, “We the People” and ends with “do establish and ordain this Constitution for the United States of America.”
I’m putting forward a proposition that we need a constitutional convention to ratify. That we should all step up and ratify it and have enough knowledge of it to say, yes, I want to continue with this constitution. Or, I want to change it, or I want to get rid of it. We should be having that public debate going on every twenty years. So we then come to the table and we nationally come together and bring delegates together to bring forward that proposition to vote and to ratify it. And to bring in all amendments that we feel that will qualify and can pass muster to add to it. So it becomes organic for every generation. Then you’re not about political parties. I can invite anyone up to the table. I can invite a neo-Nazi up to the table and say, You’re welcome to step up to the plate, but you got to debate someone eighteen or younger on the Constitution. And you have to be willing to preserve and protect the Constitution. If you’re not willing to do that then you got nothing to bring to the table. I don’t care if you’re Republican, Democrat because really what you’ve got is two parties that dominate only because there all connected through the moneyed interest, like Abraham Lincoln is pointing out.
Really the foundational thing that needs to happen is there are two sets of things, you have systemic issues and you have specific issues. They keep us arguing about the specific issues. Screw the specific issues right now we’re not going to get anywhere with that. Go to the two foundational issues. One, we as a nation must learn the Constitution. We must demand of each other that we know it and understand it and have a good historical narrative to go with it. And two, we must get rid of the corporate interest in it and the special interest in monies. They should never be in our politics, because they’re working for me. I’m paying them a salary. That’s called, when I grew up that was bribery. So there’s no justice system because we’re not taking people to tasks for accepting bribes, just that one alone.
Then you get somebody that stands up and says, well we got a bill that’s coming forward and were putting in here a death panel, which is other bullshit it doesn’t exist. Was it Grassley that was a fraud? He perpetrated a fraud. You know when you and I talk we can lie to each other and there’s no harm no fowl really. Other than you and I probably won’t talk anymore, because we’ve shown ourselves to be liars. But you take this is different, now it’s growing into a bigger thing. It’s affecting students. It’s affecting community. It’s affecting the narrative. And that’s when you need to take people to task. Wait a minute that’s not right, that’s not true. Why are you saying that if that’s not true? We need to take that. And our children need to see that we are taking that to task. You get to be a mayor and you tell me something that is not true. You should be put in jail, because he 18 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
perpetrated a fraud against me. I’m acting as a citizen, and you’re lying to me. You’ve affected my life, my children’s life, and my community. Why aren’t these guys in jail, because we’re not showing up.
WC: The last formal question that I have is you’re trying to connect this awareness that you have. In the way that you have dedicated your life now to Vietnam, if that’s possible. Is there anything that grows the dots to be connected from your experience, living in that period, or being in the military that has increased your awareness to bring you to this new commitment that you have about saving the country today? What does Vietnam have to do with this?
[1:30:00]
JL: I’m not trying to save the country. It’s a personal journey I’m on. And I just want some company. (laughs) Because we don’t need heroes we’ve got to be done with that. But connecting the dots, there was a life that doesn’t exist for me anymore that I wanted. I mean, I would have been a farmer. I loved it. I loved all the aspects of it. You know, I didn’t like doing the gardening in our own private garden. But, I enjoyed the sense of what it meant to me, and Vietnam kind of ripped that away. But it ripped away my mother’s dedication to the truth, my father’s dedication to the truth that was instilled in me and it washed away. And I don’t think they understand. I don’t think the community understands. It was my mother, father drunk or sober, right, or wrong, mentality. And that’s not doing your children any good and your community, and your nation, and the rest of the world. So it’s really a matter of survival for me. You know I have a choice. I either stay with it or I give it up. If I give it up then I probably won’t be here much longer. So it’s a sustaining proposition for me. And I’ve got enough commitment from people as I go along to challenge me to stay around a little while longer. But not being able to have a home, you know a community. I mean, I live in a truck. I have a friend’s address and home that I use for an address. I had a house and I gave it up because I never got there. What’s the point? I’m sure that has a lot to do with not having a family.
My life’s been about children. I’ve always worked with them. I worked in the Division of Welfare, child abuse and neglect, and daycare. And had a chance to work in that arena on a Seta Project, because of Jimmy Carter for a year. And it was really illuminating. I don’t understand why it doesn’t tear people up when they look at what’s going to happen to our children because we don’t step up to the plate. And for some reason, I don’t know what the blind side is to embracing the truth, but we don’t want to. Chris Hedges, writes a really—can I kind of reference something here or do you want to go on a little bit more?
WC: War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.
JL: Yeah. And I was reading it this morning in preparation. I was kind of reviewing a lot of the stuff. And I haven’t read all of them. I kind of glanced through some of them. And you know, he’s so eloquent, because he’s been there. I mean he’s been on the ground. He’s felt that adrenaline rush, as he puts it that you get when you’re in that. This sense 19 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
that there’s something about men need to feel like that and maybe some women too. But it’s a beastly act. It’s just utter bestiality.
WC: We showed the film, The Hurt Locker a week ago.
JL: Which one?
WC: Hurt Locker. It won best film and best director. Hurt Locker was directed by, Kathryn Bigelow it was the first time a women won the best director award. We showed it as part of the history film night series that we just started last week. And that film begins with a quote from page three of Hedges’ book about war being a drug, being a narcotic that people feed off it. The main character in the film, there’s a great personification of this. Getting seduced by war and getting pulled further and further in. To the point where the character is completely unable to stand in the cereal aisle in the grocery store and pick out which box of cereal. When he goes to Baghdad and puts on the suit, he knows exactly what he’s doing. And that’s what war, that’s what the military has done to this individual.
JL: Yeah, it really— whether you are in combat or ancillary to it. I consider the whole society being in a state of PTSD. Mine is something that is constantly— I never thought of it as PTSD until I talked to— I belong to an organization called Veterans for Peace. And I joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War recently. I’m going to go visit them; they’re actually having a national thing Saturday. I’m going to be in Chicago, so I’m hoping to go to it.
Woody Powell is a Korean vet, and there’s something in his voice, his demeanor. When I joined the Veterans for Peace I spoke with them. And I just was drawn. It was like a blanket, a warm blanket put around you there’s something about it. And one day he said, “By the way, I want to thank you for your service.” And I cried. I literally just broke down and started crying. It was the first time that somebody thanked me. But it also washed over me that I was a war criminal. And so it was more tears of remorse. Because I was part of a war machine that slaughtered all of these people. It was part of that slaughter. And to say that it’s a war crime requires us to say to ourselves; well you’re a war criminal. I came up with a— I don’t know if it is unique to me, but I haven’t seen it anywhere, “I first must demand justice of myself before I can demand it of others.” Because I hear people [say], “Oh, I want George Bush.” Or I’ll hear people say, “Oh, I want Obama.” That’s a big part to me. You give me a nation of people who know the Constitution and I’ll show you people that are compassionate. And a people that are just. I’m tired of blaming the politicians or people who’ve taken a position of responsibility to try to do something in this insane environment that we live in. Or people that are at each other’s throats and religion plays such a big role in that. It’s time for each of us to stop and sit down and ponder our own lives. And when Woody did that I actually pondered my life in a way that I have not done before. It was just anger and trying to figure out where to go with it. And then all of the sudden, it was almost like a calm also. And I expressed to Woody, I said, “Thanks for that. But I also realize that you’re thanking me for being a war criminal.” And he laughed and said, “Well yeah, me too.”20 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
WC: Let me end by asking you, because you’re talking to students right now, but also the message is going to students in the future. If you have a message for that freshman out there, five, ten, or twenty years from now, what would you tell her or what would you tell him about your experiences? How might you guide them as they’re entering university life here right now or in the future.
JL: Um—somebody else probably said it but Russell Means, he’s a Native American from the American Indian movement back in ’72. I came across him talking about the American movement and he said that, “A nation that doesn’t know its history has no future.” So probably the most critical thing that anyone can do— I mean math, science, and everything else, but if you don’t know your history you don’t have a chance. You’re going to repeat and or make the mistakes that I made, because if I had known the Constitution and understood it. I would have told them to stick their war up their ass. No, I’m not going to blow up people or be part of that. And I’m going to do everything I can to stop you. This nation does not deserve a military defense. We don’t deserve it. We’re callus. We’re cruel. We’re calculating. We’re arrogant in our ignorance. We wear arrogance like it’s a badge of honor. And it’s the children and the women are the ones that suffer. We need to change. We need to grow up. We are a nation of people that are like eight year olds. We got big but we never grew up. And we’re playing with that same mentality and that same emotional direction that we get as an eight year old. Only, we’re playing with tools that are dangerous to the point of possible extinction.
So don’t put on uniform. Whatever you’re doing don’t do that. Not now, not until we get a constitutional republic. Then you can think about it. But that’s a long ways down the road. Because I got to tell you we didn’t have a military of any sort before World War II. Now the National Guard that’s a different thing [they’re] a well-regulated militia, fine. Because that’s family and friends, people are eating.
[1:40:01]
I’m not worried about them attacking me. But I am worried about this military being used. We’ve had this happened before, it’s called a civil war. If we don’t wake up, I don’t know. And I don’t like to project down the road. I try to stand on this path of hey here’s a constitution, here’s a constitution, and I sure hope we get to it.
WC: Thank you. Do you all have any questions that you would like to ask?
??: I have one. I really appreciate you touching on a little bit about what you could have done if you never would have gone to the Vietnam War, or been drafted. I would like you to develop a little bit more, what are other things that you regretted not having done because you were drafted.
JL: Well, probably the person that I would have been before that would have been somebody that was steeped in a lot of knowledge of history, but I wasn’t. I don’t know if I have a lot of regrets. Because it’s like, your life is your life. It is whatever it is. It’s what you do with your historical narrative. You can’t do anything about your history. Nobody can 21 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
except build on it. I want my historical narrative each day to be something that I can look at and point to and say, “I’m okay with this. I feel good about this or I’m very proud of this.” I want each day to be one that in some way I hope with compassion presents the narrative, because everybody is at a different level. I’ve been talking to a lot of people, mostly at just like an individual level so I don’t do too much damage. Because everyone’s coming from a background of narrative just like I did. I was indoctrinated that if you’re not Catholic you’re going to hell. You know what the hell is that? But that’s what it was. And maybe still is. If you’re not Baptist, if you’re not Mormon where do they get this insanity? The next best thing, you got the Scientologists now. They got things coming out of volcanoes or something, I don’t know. There is nothing that you can do about it. You just take that narrative and whatever’s left of my life. To me it’s committed to finding a way out. I think all of us need to help each other out in that process.
I’m a very private person generally. I like my solitude. I’m starting to get out more and more. I’ll probably be doing, Youtube. And that’s when people are either going to hate you a lot or love you a lot. And never be where the reality is of who you are. My sister thinks that I’m a progressive socialist Marxist something. (laughs) And I’m going, “I’m promoting the Constitution for God’s sake.” So we don’t talk. And I’m really sad about that, because I really love her. She’s a remarkable lady.
I just had a talk with a good friend, he’s Mormon. He’s a great guy. And we get engaged in a political conversation, the Glen Beck thing. I said, “You realize that he’s destroying your children’s future?” When someone oblique’s lies, promotes anger, or fear, hate, there’s nothing good that comes out of that except Nazism, or Stalinism, or isms. The only thing that comes out of that is anger, fear, and then you attack. People hurt each other. You lose the opportunity to build community. And that’s why we’re not building community. That’s why we’re destroying not only the community there but the community here. The cities that I go through, the devastation that I see you might as well drop bombs for all practical purposes. Because we have allowed a handful of people to contract, they say it’s a capitalist society. I say it’s not. It’s a society that is about our children. Anybody that just reads the preamble “We the People” it doesn’t say documented or undocumented. It doesn’t say citizen or non-citizen. It doesn’t say corporate. It says, “We the People of the United States.” If you’re here you’re an American. If you’re a student it doesn’t matter, whatever. While you’re here pick it up and read it. Make it yours. So there’s nothing I can do about my past except try to make my future a little bit better by what I do today.
WC: Any other questions?
?? : You mentioned quite a bit about drug use on the ship. But you also thought maybe it was a promoted thing?
JL: Oh, of course it was.
?? : How did that happen?22 | Vietnam Era Oral History Project: Joseph LaBonte
JL: You’re trying to keep the people at home quelled, while you’ve got people that are getting written by people from home saying— and I’m watching Kent State. I’m watching Martin Luther King being killed. You’re seeing these things happen. And there’s no way that these drugs are going to be available just on their own. I will always be convinced and I’m sure that someday if we ever get the records out. Thank God for WikiLeaks. Knowledge is power. And they keep the knowledge to themselves. So they maintain a power. There’s no way that all of these kinds of drugs and stuff were available just because of guys. I mean they could have stopped us. My chief was never prouder of me when I came on and I went out. I didn’t drink much till I got in the Navy. And the guys took me out and I got so drunk that I ended up in somebody else’s car. And they found me before we took off. And I couldn’t stand up. I turned so ashen white that they had to take me to sick bay and pump me full of Vitamin B. I literally poisoned myself with so much alcohol. And my chief just put his hand on me and said, “What a man.” That was a measure of a man. So drugs, what the hell you know who cares. So long as we do our jobs, were placated, and we were quiet. Most of these people flying these missions came out with the reports on how they would have to take the drugs in order to keep flying. You can’t sit in that seat and fly the kind of hours that they’re flying and not have something to keep you going.
WC: Well Joe, thank you very much sir. You’ve done us a real service here at the University. You’ve helped provide the information for completing our knowledge about that period and about the present and future.
JL: Well thanks. Read the Constitution and know it. (laughs)
[1:47:37]
End of interview
i (NCO) Non Commission Officer
ii (AIT) Advanced Individual Training
iii (XO) Executive Officer